by Gary K. Wolf
Charlie spun his rear wheel, side slipped, and took off down the street in a cloud of smoke.
The speed and acceleration lifted Roger right off his seat. He hung on to Charlie’s handlebars, becoming the rabbitty equivalent of a raccoon tail.
“Go, go, go!” shouted Sands to Miss Ethyl, his camera focused on Charlie and Roger who were almost out of sight.
Miss Ethyl punched the accelerator. The truck didn’t have nearly enough power to catch the motorcycle and the rabbit. Miss Ethyl barely managed to keep them in sight.
We were going so fast I felt like we were riding our own motorcycle for real.
“How’d you like that?” I asked Cooper when we pulled up to the embarkation terminal for The Toontown Trolley.
“Heady,” he said. His face was blackened by the exhaust fumes of the truck. He used his tongue and his fingernail to dislodge the bugs caught in his teeth.
“I’m gonna grab me a few brews,” said Charlie to Roger. “If you need me to give you a ride home,” he winked his headlight eyeball, “call a cab. Cause in short order I’m gonna be too drunk to drive.”
I could grow to like this hunk of junk.
Since we wouldn’t be needing the truck or the cycle, Miss Ethyl drove off to buy black paint for the camera.
Me, Roger, Cooper, and Sands boarded the Toontown Trolley.
“What’s the fare?” I asked the conductor—Stoneface Jackson, according to the nametag on his jacket. Mutt climbed out of the saddlebag and followed me on to the trolley.
“Half a simoleon or a funny joke,” he said.
Me, Cooper and Sands handed over our money.
Roger took the second option. “Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl going to the p-p-p-potty? Give up? Because his P-P-P-P is silent!”
The conductor stared at him, stone-faced.
Roger tried again. “Why did the five watt bulb flunk out of school? Don’t know? Because he wasn’t very bright!”
Nothing from the conductor for the second time.
“Okay, okay. Here’s one. A guaranteed knee slapper. Which side of a chicken has the most feathers? Are you ready? Here’s the answer. The outside!”
Stoneface shook his head. “You ain’t funny, buddy.”
I could have told Roger that. In fact I did, quite often.
“I got a schedule to keep,” the conductor told the rabbit. “You’re out of tries. You’re paying cash.”
Roger grudgingly forked over half a simoleon.
As he walked to his seat, Roger tripped over Sands’s outstretched foot. He fell flat on his kisser.
Stoneface cracked up. “That was funny,” he said. “Here.” He gave Roger his money back.
Mutt rolled over, sat up, and begged. Stoneface smiled. “The dog can ride for free.”
Mutt hopped up on to the seat beside me. He crawled into my lap, whimpered a time or two, and fell asleep.
The Trolley took off down Rocky Road.
I checked the route map in Roger’s Gossipy Guidebook.
Mutt had a stay of execution. We weren’t going over any bridges this trip. Mostly to keep my hands busy, I scratched Mutt behind the ears.
We came to a long stretch of street resembling a blank newspaper comic panel.
“This is Comic Strip,” said Roger. “Characters from the funnies hang out here hoping to be discovered by a movie producer. That hasn’t happened since Betty Boop, but hope springs eternal. Starving young actors and actresses regularly pass out from hunger along the Strip. They get accidentally carted off when the road crews roll up the sidewalks at two A.M. I got a picture of it here in my book.”
He showed us the snapshot—a rolled up sidewalk with legs poking out of each end.
“Here’s our first shooting locale,” announced Roger. “Toontown Towers, located right at the end of The Road To Success.”
We hopped off the Trolley and walked to the building.
Mutt tagged along at my heels.
Toontown Towers was built Toon style, all curves, bows, arches, and swoops. A trick of visual perspective—a common occurrence in Toontown—made Toontown Towers appear to be about three miles high.
“This is the most prestigious residential address in Toontown,” said Roger. “The home of the movers and the shakers.”
Two movers and one shaker came out the front door.
One of the movers was a massive Toon swine. His overweight, jiggly body demonstrated the ugly result of gobbling double helpings of slops and swill. The porker wore the pinstriped suit favored by costumers of third rate gangster movies. The suit’s overly broad shoulder pads forced the pig to turn sideways whenever he walked through a doorway. The brim on his fedora was the same circumference as his ample belly. His teeth resembled an opposing pair of hacksaw blades—their sharpened points sparkled in the sunlight. At least the solid gold ones did. The rest were split fifty-fifty between dirty yellow and rotten black. Because only the tips of his rear cloven hooves touched the ground, the porker walked with the dainty, mincing gait of a ballet dancer en pointe.
The other mover was a louse. That wasn’t meant as a crack about his ethics or morality. He was a Toon louse, and a big one. Outsized, over muscled, and supremely hideous. The kind of mutated louse that might walk out of the Las Vegas desert in a science fiction movie about one of those radiation spewing atomic tests the government bangs out.
The louse had the shape of a ping pong paddle. Like the porker, he stood on his back legs and used his forelegs for arms. He did better in the walking department than the pig. He hop flopped along like a kangaroo. His bulging forelegs tapered down to sharp pincers. The louse had a third set of legs to use for whatever needing doing. Right now, his nose needed picking and his ass needed scratching. He had one mid-leg working in each department.
Maybe better Toontown department stores catered to the louse trade and stocked whole sections of louse clothing. A louse this big, this muscular, couldn’t possibly buy off the rack. He had to go custom made. If so, his tailor drew inspiration from the rough housers who work down at the docks. The louse wore blue denim pants, an orange T-shirt, and a blue wool jacket with a fur collar. His middle set of legs went through extra arm holes in the shirt and jacket instead of extra leg holes in the pants. Made sense given that he had assigned his mid-legs the role of attending to his personal hygiene.
The shaker of the trio was another story. A really good story. Blonde, gorgeous, stacked and slinky. When I called her a shaker, I wasn’t kidding. Her bubbly front and curvaceous rear jiggled so much when she moved that Mister Richter could have renamed his earthquake scale in her honor.
A new fad going around Tinseltown, a bendy, stretchy, semi-fruity exercise called yoga, appealed to young, female actresses. I figured the shaker must be a practitioner. She wore the baggy white cotton pants and loose fitting white cotton top of an Indian fakir. She toted a rolled up rubber mat under her arm. If that was what the scenery looked like in a yoga class, maybe I’d do some myself. My eyeballs could use the exercise.
Sands turned his camera off. I would have, too. Although the shaker was worth a foot of film or two, the pig and the louse were so ugly they might break his lens.
Mutt took an instant dislike to the pig. He ran forward, yapping, and nipped at the pig’s pants leg.
“Get away from me, you mangy mutt!” said the pig in a balloon with lettering midway between a thin high piggy squeal and a thick angry oink.
Mutt kept right on nipping. A tenacious pup, this one.
Attempting to evade the little guy, the pig tiptoed around in a little circle. He was so unsteady on his hooves, the puppy stood a good chance of bringing him down. Maybe Mutt was part wolfhound and was looking for lunch.
“Get away from me,” repeated the pig.
Realizing the
puppy couldn’t read his balloon, the pig called in reinforcements.
“Do something,” he told the louse.
The louse reached into his jacket. He half pulled out a gun.
“No,” said the pig. “None of that.”
The louse snap-clicked its sharp pointy mandibles together a couple of times. Louse speak, I suppose, for “I wanna blast a hole in this mongrel’s noggin.”
The pig put up an Oink balloon that drifted over and bopped the louse upside the head.
The louse put the gun away.
The louse wasn’t ready to give up that easy. He stepped forward and kicked Mutt a good one.
Mutt went sailing and crashed into a fire hydrant. Luckily, the hydrant, a compassionate Toon, formed an ad hoc catcher’s mitt out of its upper stem and outlet cap and caught the puppy in mid-air.
“No call for that, buddy,” I said. “Mutt’s only a puppy. He don’t know any better.”
Granted, I planned on tossing Mutt off a high bridge myself later on today. Until then, I wasn’t gonna let him be abused by an obnoxious stranger.
I picked Mutt up. He whimpered and curled into the crook of my arm.
“Maybe you wanna go flying next,” said the louse. “How’d you like that?”
“Wanna try it, bug boy?”
“Don’t call me bug boy.”
“How about germ? Insect. Creepy crawler. Like any of those better? Waddya say? You wanna dance with me? With all your legs, you could be your own conga line.”
The louse stepped toward me, both sets of his upper arms extended. My fights had all been man to man. Me against two-armed opponents. I’d never fought a creature with four arms before. I could have a problem. This louse might do some damage before I figured him out. If I figured him out.
Cooper strode over and stood in next to me. “Fair fight.” He raised up his hands, evening the odds at four against four.
Cooper assumed the classical boxing style invented by the Marquis of Queensbury and used nowadays only to settle gentlemanly disagreements at upper class boarding schools. He’d be no match for the louse who, I suspect, learned his boxing technique the same place I learned mine, in back alleys and bars.
Not to be left out, Roger joined in the fracas. I couldn’t decide if him coming in on our side bettered or worsened our odds.
Roger’s boxing style incorporated the footwork of a man with ants in his pants and the punching style of an old lady swatting at a bee.
The louse sized up his opponents. Just like I would have done, he went for the weak link first. He faked a left hook, faked a left cross with his other left, faked a right uppercut, and boinked Roger in the nose with his other right.
Roger went down like he’d been poleaxed.
Roger’s eyes turned to black X’s. Little birdies and stars floated in circles over his head.
“Stop,” said Sands playing peacemaker. He stepped between me and Cooper, and the louse. “There’s no cause for violence here. Let’s all simmer down.”
Sands’s attitude surprised me. I would have figured a good fist fight would give his stupid documentary some much needed heat. Sands hadn’t filmed Roger getting beaned. Hadn’t filmed any part of this dust up. Guess I didn’t know as much about what hooks an audience as I thought.
Or maybe Sands’s peacemaking was as simple as not wanting his co-stars getting their heads knocked off.
“Yeah, Louie Louie,” said the pig to the louse. “Back off. I don’t want no trouble.”
The louse retreated a few steps. He gave off a balloon with the shape and flashing ferocity of a violent thundercloud. What Toons call a temper burst. He had ample reason for being mad. He didn’t get to shoot a dog. He didn’t get to beat up two humans. He smacked the wack out of a silly rabbit.
De-wacking Roger would have satisfied me. I would have considered that a good day’s work, but I’m no louse.
“Excuse Louie Louie,” said the pig. “He sometimes gets carried away. You know how excitable louses can be.”
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I don’t.”
“You do now,” said the pig. “Next time you see Louie Louie coming, I’d suggest you cross the street.”
“Good advice for him too when he sees me,” I said.
“I’m Willy Prosciutto,” said the pig. “Just so you know how things work, I run Toontown.”
“Good to meet you, sir,” said Sands. “I’m Barney Sands. This is Eddie Valiant. Gary Cooper. And Roger Rabbit.”
The pig snorted, a balloon full of mucus that exploded when it fell to Earth.
“Sands, Cooper, Eddie, and the rabbit,” said the pig. “Sounds like the title of a stag film I saw at a cop’s bachelor party smoker. Sands and Cooper were undercover broads, if you get my drift.” He tried to simulate copulation with his hooves, but couldn’t create anything circular into which to insert his straight. “Eddie was a nancy boy. The rabbit was hung like a bull, but ain’t they all.”
Roger nodded.
“You guys got business here in Toontown?”
“Not really,” lied Sands. “We’re just checking out the sights.”
Roger sat up. He stuck a finger into the air. “We’re making a movie!”
Sands shushed him.
Roger brought his upraised finger to his lips and shushed himself. “Don’t tell anybody. What we’re doing here is a big secret.”
The pig tilted his head and squinted his piggy eyes at Cooper. “I know you from sumplace?” He snuffled through his big round nose. “You’re that actor guy. Cooper. I seen a couple of your pictures. What was your first name? I forgot already. Barry? Larry? Harry.”
The shaker piped up. “It’s Gary.” She batted with lashes so long they could have hit a baseball over a center field wall.
“Naw, that ain’t it,” said the pig, scratching his wattle.
“You’re wonderful,” said the frail. Her word balloon formed a silhouette of her body except without clothes.
“Thanks.”
She pursed her lips and blew, dissipating her suggestive balloon before the pig saw what she’d done. “I’m Caitlyn Graham,” she said. “My friends call me Honey. I’m hoping we’ll be friends. Good friends. Close friends.” Whiffs of steam rose from her balloons.
“Here’s a word of advice,” said the pig. “You want anything done in Toontown, you go through me. I give it the yeah or nay. Understood?”
Sands nodded. “Yes sir, whatever you say. We certainly don’t want to step on any toes.”
“That some kind of wisecrack?” said the pig, obviously sensitive about his girlish gait.
“No sir,” said Sands. “No offense. A figure of speech. That’s all.”
The pig nodded.
The three of them climbed into a squatty black car. Not one of the talking models you see everywhere around Toontown. This one came from my part of the world, or at least that part of my world portrayed in gangster movies. The car was the kind of black sedan that came careening around a corner with a bullet-spewing machine gun sticking out the window.
I didn’t like the looks of this.
The rabbit had pulled himself up. His cheek was swollen to the size of a bright red bowling ball. The protrusion produced a succession of closely spaced wavy lines, what Toons call pain puffs. Getting bopped must be a common occurrence for the rabbit. Either that, or his overalls were better stocked than my apartment. He reached deep into his and pulled out a rubber chicken. He reached into his other pocket and withdrew a handful of ice. He put the ice into the chicken and held it to his cheek.
“Who was that?” I asked the rabbit.
“Ooooh, you don’t want to know.”
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
&n
bsp; “You don’t.”
“I don’t.”
The oldest trick in the book, but Toons fell for it every time.
“You do!” He flipped through the pages of his Gossipy Guide. Roger found the page he was looking for.
He showed me a picture of Willy. It was one of the few in the Guidebook which Roger hadn’t taken himself. This picture was a mug shot.
“‘Willy Prosciutto’s one mean porker,’” Roger read aloud. “He has his greasy hooves in every Toontown pie. He’s earned plenty of bacon. Get Prosciutto heated up, and you’ll wind up scrambled with egg on your face. Prosciutto’s one ham who’ll never be cured.
“He got his start doing walk-ons in barnyard movies. One time a reviewer wrote that Willy was such a ham actor he ought to wear a clove in his buttonhole. That reviewer disappeared and was never seen again.
“The blonde who was with him is his girlfriend, Honey Graham. The muscle is his right hand cockroach, Louie Louie Louse.”
“One of Toontown’s juicier rumors concerns an event that supposedly happened right up there in Willy Prosciutto’s penthouse. You can see it for yourself.”
He handed me the book.
Roger had used a clever technique. He’d hand drawn a series of pages with crayons. By flipping them, I saw a moving picture of Prosciutto’s sleazy story complete with subtitles to explain the action.
Boss Tweedledeedledum, the current Mayor of Toontown, had organized a hot and spicy game of leapfrog at one of the rip-roaring, anything goes, whoopty-do rollicking revels Prosciutto threw for his cronies. Things were hopping along when Boss T accidentally landed smack, kerplop on top of hotcha tire model Michelle Michelin.
Boss T’s diamond stickpin punctured the poor girl’s sidewall.
Prosciutto’s henchman Louie Louie lugged Michelle to a gas station where a shady no-questions-asked auto mechanic known for practicing without a business license patched her hole and pumped her full of air.
Louie Louie rolled the unconscious girl home and dumped her in her living room. Sometime during the night her patch worked loose.