Still Life With Woodpecker Still Life With Woodpecker

by Tom Robbins

  Or—a typewriter constructed of tiny seashells by a retired merchant sailor, built inside a bottle so that it can be worked only by the little finger of the left hand of a right-handed person. A left-handed typewriter for a left-handed task. (You’re aware, I assume, of the scientific discovery that our universe lives side by side with a parallel universe. The two universes, identical in many respects, are opposite in electrical charge and magnetic property: the “anti-universe,” so called, is in effect a mirror image, a reverse copy. Well, certain amino acids are left-handed, some are their reflection, right-handed. But the proteins in living organisms are always left-handed. The right-handed amino acids are impossible to digest and can be harmful to life. It’s smart not to eat anything you find in a mirror. As for those novels that claim to “mirror” reality … may a word to the wise be sufficient.

  (Toward the wind-down of the Second World War, an American flyer parachuted from his burning plane to land in an isolated village near Japan’s Inland Sea. The villagers, devout Buddhists far removed from the hot arena of events and the Shinto/fascistic/industrial philosophies that had spawned the events, took in the broken pilot and nursed him. They kept him concealed and alive for several months, but eventually he died.

  (Since Buddhists have reverence for all life, they also respect the proprieties of death. The villagers wished to award the dead foreigner his entitled burial, but the only funereal customs with which they were familiar were Buddhist, and those, of course, would have been inappropriate.

  (Having packed the corpse in pond ice, they set out to make inquiries about Christian burial procedures, all very discreetly so as not to arouse the suspicion of the authorities. Their luck was small.

  (At last, someone smuggled into the village a Japanese translation of an English language book that promised to provide the information they sought. The book was called Finnegans Wake.

  (If you can picture those remote 1945 Japanese peasants earnestly trying to hold a drunken Irish wake, complicated by the experimental wordplay of James Joyce, you can picture the relationship between an author, his typewriter, and that reality to whose recreation he’s obliged to apply the southpaw touch, even though he knows only too well the function Arabs and Hindus assign the left hand.)

  I’m not so far gone that I expect technologists to be interested in designing machines for artists—why, if novelists got wooden typewriters, poets would demand that theirs be ice. What is more likely is that technology will bypass artists, that a day is coming when our novels will be written by computers, the same devices that will paint our murals and compose our tunes. If I’m chuckling, it’s because I’m imagining a computer, programmed to produce logical variations on the eighteen possible literary plots, I’m imagining that computer trying to deal with what happened in Leigh-Cheri’s attic. If I’m chuckling, it means that the Remington SL3 had better watch its P’s p’s and Q’s q’s.

  PHASE

  II

  18

  IT WAS MID-AFTERNOON, a good five hours before moonrise, when the flight touched down in Honolulu, but already the mai tais were swaying, the pineapples were jiggling, the mongooses were mating, and coconuts were rolling in ecstasy. The Hawaii sun, in contrast to, say, the Nebraska sun, had obviously fallen under the influence of the moon and was given to deporting itself in a fairly feminine fashion. Not that the Hawaii sun wouldn’t fry your hide off should you show it disrespect, but it had a romantic aura, a decidedly lunar attitude toward amore that the sun of Mexico would consider soft and weak. Despite the tangle of traffic, the din of condominium construction, the smoking sugar refineries, and the strange spectacle of Japanese tourists roaming the hot beaches in business suits and street shoes, Hawaii was, indeed, a travelogue tableau; a living Pap smear for the paradise flu.

  So goofy/erotic was the Hawaiian language that the street signs read like invitations to pagan whoopjam-boreehoos, and “nookie” was on the tip of every sober tongue. Hawaiian was a language that could name a fish “humuhumunukunukuapua’a” and a bird “o-o,” and never mind that the bird was larger than the fish. Humuhumunukunukuapua’a (a typewriter that enjoys that word as much as the Remington SL3 couldn’t be all bad) still played in Hawaiian waters, not fifty yards from the leather soles of Sony executives, but the o-o, that gorgeous honeysucker, was long gone. Hawaiian royalty favored the tail feathers of the o-o for their ceremonial capes. Hawaii’s rulers were mammoth, their capes were very long. It took a lot of tail feathers to make a king a cape. The o-o was plucked into extinction. O O spaghetti-o.

  Although the ecological implications would have appalled her, Leigh-Cheri could fancy herself in o-o. If our pale Princess could have chosen a land to be queen of, Hawaii was it. The instant she stepped off the jetliner, her heart began to pump pure hibiscus juice. If her hands were tied behind her and the world had Hawaii in its wall safe, she would have figured a way to get it out. Hawaii made the mouth of her soul water.

  Alas, Leigh-Cheri hadn’t much opportunity for reverie. Because of frog problems, her plane had landed on Oahu merely minutes before her connecting flight on interisland Aloha Airlines was scheduled to depart for Maui. She and Gulietta had to run, if you could call Gulietta’s scurrying a run, from one end of Honolulu’s airport to the other.

  So intent was their dash that they failed to notice that Bernard Mickey Wrangle was loping along beside them.

  19

  THE FLIGHT TO MAUI was as bumpy as a kite’s. As the small plane was tossed about by drafts, several passengers acquired the hue of Hawaiian foliage. Leigh-Cheri, however, had been driven to the airport that morning by Chuck the chauffeur, and after such a ride, it would have taken more than a little turbulent air to unnerve her. Gulietta was simply too old to be unnerved by anything, although she was still pouting about the confiscation of her totem. As for Bernard M. Wrangle, who sat behind the Princess studying her red hair, his heart thumped peacefully against the explosives taped to his chest.

  As the aircraft bobbed, so did Leigh-Cheri’s mind, up and down, from one level to another, thinking one moment of the charms of Hawaii, to which she had a mild addiction; thinking the next of the Care Fest and the great good that might come from it; bouncing to thoughts of herself, who she was and who she might be.

  “I’m a princess,” she reminded herself, with a minimum of conviction, “a princess who grew up in a blackberry patch near Seattle, who’s never so much as set a tennis shoe in the nation where her royal blood was formed, a princess who doesn’t know diddly squat about princessing, a princess who’s behaved like a twit and a twat; who’s been, well, disappointed in men and romance, who’s a bit confused, who’s got a lot to learn, but a princess, after all; just as fucking much as Caroline or Anne, and although in the last quarter of the twentieth century the very idea of royalty may seem artificial, archaic, and somewhat decadent, I insist on my princess-hood because without it I’m just another physically attractive woman with that I-went-to-college-but-it-didn’t-do-me-any-good look and nothing much to offer anyone. If I’m lost as a lover, I’m still right here as a human. I feel the pain of humanity inside me, in my tummy, about eight inches above the peachfish. Whether I’m unduly sensitive to this pain because I’m a princess—could the whole world be the pea under my mattress?—I don’t know, but because I’m a princess, I might be able to do something to help lessen humanity’s pain. And the Care Fest just may show me the way to do it. I wonder if Ralph is staying at our hotel? I hope I packed my No Nukes T-shirt. Don’t Crosby, Stills, and Nash hang out in Lahaina? Can I drink more than one mai tai without taking on the aroma of an aroused butterfly?”

  Her thoughts dipped and lifted in unstable air.

  Before long, they had passed over Molokai and could see the reddish corona of Haleakala rising in the southeast like the stone in a Truman Capote mood ring. “Maui,” whispered Leigh-Cheri to Gulietta. “Maui.” Her own red top bounced as she sat up straight in her seat. Bernard—the Woodpecker—regarded it with the gaze of an expert.


  20

  SUSPECTING THAT THE AUTHORITIES might run checks on hair dye purchases, Bernard made his own coloring from roots and bark. It had a peculiar smell, but women did not find it unattractive. To Bernard, the odor evoked memories of vulture shadows and wolf howls; of cocaine, high explosives, and sure-footed steeds; of the hideout behind the waterfall. As for its effect on others, he’d been asked more than once if he didn’t shampoo with root beer. He limited the dying to the hair on his head and for that reason was careful to make love only in the dark. Once, he spilled the dye all over his shoes. From then on, he dyed with his boots on.

  The Twelve Most Famous Redheads:

  Lucille Ball, comedienne

  Gen. George Custer, military maverick

  Lizzie Borden, hatchetwoman

  Thomas Jefferson, revolutionary

  Red Skelton, comic

  George Bernard Shaw, playwright

  Judas Iscariot, informer

  Mark Twain, humorist

  Woody Allen, humorist

  Margaret Sanger, feminist

  Edna St. Vincent Millay, libertine poet

  Bernard Mickey Wrangle, bomber

  From this list, the analytically minded might conclude that persons with red hair tend to be either dangerous or funny. But of the dozen, only one ever had to hide his or her hue. Even Judas flew his natural colors. Judas Iscarrot-top.

  How did Bernard feel about dressing his woodpecker strands in suits of crow? From the admiring looks that he aimed at Leigh-Cheri’s crown, and Haleakala’s, a shallow observer might be inclined to compare him to a connoisseur of rubies trapped under a coal chute. Upon more careful examination, however, one would have to report that he took a very nearly delicious pleasure in smuggling his curls about, their blaze concealed from the cold eye of the law by the thinnest millimeter of pigment.

  And, of course, Bernard, as all men, carried around in his trousers the most renowned redhead of all—characteristically funny and dangerous.

  21

  ABOARD ALOHA AIRLINES FLIGHT 23, Bernard wasn’t the only admirer of Leigh-Cheri. From the seat in front of her, a young man with a long, wavy beard, aloha shirt, and hibiscus blossoms intertwined in his ponytail had turned around to engage her in conversation. He was on his way to the Care Fest, he said, to teach meditation techniques at a workshop. The young man tried to interest Leigh-Cheri in his program. He offered to give her personal instruction in meditation, free of charge. She seemed to be seriously considering it.

  Bernard leaned forward until his freckled chin rested atop Leigh-Cheri’s seat. “Yum,” he said.

  The Princess flinched, but did not glance back. The young man in front began showing her his puka shell necklace. While fingering the pukas, he spoke quietly to her of deep relaxation, inner peace, and the wisdom of letting things flow.

  “Yum,” repeated Bernard. He said it very close to the royal ear.

  This time she spun around. Her expression was indignant. “I beg your pardon.”

  Bernard smiled as sweetly as a retarded jack-o’-lantern. “It’s my mantra.”

  Leigh-Cheri glowered at him, as only someone of the redheaded persuasion can glower. He was dressed all in black and had bad teeth. He was wearing Donald Duck sunglasses. Kiddie glasses. She turned back to the meditation instructor, who at once ceased scowling at Bernard and gave her a sympathetic look.

  “There are only two mantras,” said Bernard. “Yum and yuk. Mine is yum.”

  It sounded halfway logical, but the Princess refused to respond. She squeezed Gulietta’s hand. She asked the junior guru in front how meditation could help alleviate suffering in the world.

  “Yum,” said Bernard. “Yuu-mmmm.” Leigh-Cheri ignored him. The other passengers regarded him strangely.

  “Do you need anything, sir?” asked the stewardess.

  Bernard shrugged. He looked out of the window. He looked at the rosy rim of the big volcano. Haleakala—“House of the Sun.” If Haleakala was where the sun called home, what was the moon’s address? Did the moon live in France on Main Street?

  22

  IT WAS HALEAKALA, erupting in tandem with a lesser volcano, that created the island of Maui. It must have been a show. The crater was seven and one half miles across, the cone more than ten thousand feet high, yet Haleakala had a presence at which even the most impressive measurements didn’t hint.

  Such an eerie, unfamiliar place was Haleakala that there was a tendency to associate it with other worlds, outer spaces. Indeed, an unusually large percentage of visitors who camped there overnight in order to view the famous Haleakala sunrise, the sun awakening in its own bedroom, swore to having seen oddly lighted forms in the sky. To the dormant volcano, with its crumbly cromlechs, its lunar contours, its black and red sands, supernatural properties came to be attributed. Many regarded it a universal center, an intergalactic connecting point, a cosmic bean-hill, the earth terminal for spaceships of all degrees of substance and visibility. So many people claimed to have seen UFOs buzzing Haleakala that it turned into a mecca for flying-saucer fans and would-be cosmic cosmopolitans. Individuals, entire cults with outer-space orientations settled in the valleys near the base of the mountain.

  When word of the impending Care Fest spread from Lahaina into the Maui interior, the various flying-saucer groups banded together to insist that they be included in the conference. The fact that Timothy Leary had been invited to the Care Fest to present his theories on orbiting space colonies pleased but didn’t placate them. “The future of the earth is bound up with the future of the universe,” they reasoned. Some went so far as to state that the future of the earth was entirely in the hands of superior beings on distant planets. The Care Fest would be a sham if UFO scholars and intermediaries weren’t included, they said.

  “The agenda is already set, and it’s crowded as it is,” protested the organizers.

  The saucer people didn’t care. They raced their kryptonite engines, billowed their green exhaust. From the thirteenth floor of the Darth Vader Building, communiqués and manifestoes issued.

  A compromise was reached. The Maui saucerites were granted use of conference facilities on Sunday, the day prior to the official opening of the Care Fest, the day that Leigh-Cheri arrived in Lahaina. As the Princess and her chaperon checked into the Pioneer Inn, a UFO gathering was already in progress there. “How peculiar,” remarked Leigh-Cheri, noticing the flowing robes and wide eyes of the delegates. There was no one in the lobby who looked the slightest like Ralph Nader.

  What the hell, it was Sunday. Sunday is Sunday, even in Hawaii. No volume of orchid nectar, no wardrobe of o-o plumage could change the color of Sunday from that of … buttermilk, toothpaste, Camembert cheese. Leigh-Cheri knew better than to jump to conclusions on a Sunday. After unpacking, she seated herself out on the lanai, where luxuriously awash in tropical twilight, she perused the Sunday edition of the Honolulu Advertiser.

  A lanai was a veranda in Hawaii, but Lanai was also the name of one of the smallest of the Hawaiian Islands. The island of Lanai was close to Maui, a sort of veranda of Maui, and was clearly visible from Lahaina. In those days, Lanai was almost entirely in the possession of the Dole Corporation, which planted it in pineapples and limited its visitors, but Lanai hadn’t always been a company island. As a matter of fact, there was a time when it was outlaw territory, a refuge for fugitives. If a Hawaiian lawbreaker could make it to Lanai, he was home free. That was the agreement. Police had voluntarily suspended their authority at the shoreline of Lanai. Moreover, if an escaped prisoner or a culprit fleeing a crime could survive seven years on the island (which had little food or fresh water), charges against him were dropped, and he could return to society a free man.

  Maybe that’s why Bernard Mickey Wrangle stood on the Lahaina waterfront staring at Lanai—staring hard, shifting weight from one boot to the other, occasionally saying “yum” under his breath.

  The Woodpecker had been a fugitive (this last time) for more than six years. In
eleven months, the statute of limitations in his case would expire, and he would become, in the eyes of the law, “free.”

  The Woodpecker stared at the former outlaw island until its margins melted like raw sugar into the steeping tea of night. Then he crossed the street to the Pioneer Inn, the restored old whalers’ hotel, where the usual crowd of international beach bums, cool kamaainas, sailboat crewmen, amateur adventurers, itinerant waitresses, students on the metamorphose from Midwest bookworms into South Pacific night owls (“The University of Pineapple is my alma papaya, I graduated mango cum laude.”), rock musicians of varying degrees of celebrity and expertise, young divorcées (older ones went to Waikiki), divers (coral, salvage, skin, and muff), puka salesmen, T-shirt air-brushers, and Berkeley radicals with a secret romantic streak made themselves at home, coming and going, flirting and hustling, posing and preening, scheming and letting off steam, a gin or rum never far from the lips, a fortune, a nirvana, or a revolution always just out of reach. Mingling with the regulars on this Sunday evening were freshly arrived Care Fest delegates, famous and unknown; plus a man and woman from the planet Argon who had slipped away from the UFO conference to have a piña colada. Plus the Woodpecker.

  The Woodpecker did tequila drink. The Pioneer bar was so crowded that much dry time elapsed between waiter’s visits, so the Woodpecker ordered triples. Lanai, that arid sanctuary, evidently had stimulated his thirst buds. Slurping his tequilas with a noise that sounded not dissimilar to “yum,” he scanned the room in vain for a glimpse of long red hair and felt the seven sticks of explosive pressing, almost erotically, against the freckles of his flesh.