The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy Chaos

by Karen S. Cole

THE CATHOLIC MISSION and Mr. Goneschlaw were at odds with each other. He thought. Loads!

  There was very little excitement left in Jewish Bob Goneschlaw’s life. He’d sold his part ownership in the Krakatoa. He was forever stuck with God’s enforced silence, unable to speak clearly for past dozen years, much longer than that, it seemed.

  It never felt right to him. Sometimes Bob lost track.

  He would consult paper, this guide and toy, to check on what his life was doing to his life, and the world in general. His hearing was beginning to go. He almost desired to join it, to go to wherever it was going, but decided against it many times. Life!

  He had a lady friend, almost gettin’ her trapped, in Poindexter, WA, up the road always. Poind had a notable water tower, a brand-new clinic and sported three sprawling horse ranches, but little else save Virginia gave it any character or flavor. Virginia WAS character and flavor. Ah, later, my lovely, and later STILL. If you will, I will, and c.

  Mr. Goneschlaw fed his cat, a twenty-pounder that could walk maybe ten steps to the front door before she sped out and ran around like she liked, all night, bloody the hell the night. She was named Gilliganna “Fahrvergnugen.” He couldn’t say that word. One night be decided to join his cat and have an adventure, a soundless reprieve.

  The Adventures of a Dumb Man

  Polish, plain, but charming, elegant but not stuck-up, Robert Goneschlaw breezed out of his Sunday den into a lucid, cool night that opened before his as the bottom of a starry, limitless canopy, a velvet, lanolin-on-the-skin nightcap for his head and soul. He carried a cane, and his swinging it alternated with his using it. His gout was bothersome once more. Terminal.

  “By go, I enjoy ravishin’ nighttime when I’ve been missing it,” he thought. He sadly was used to the malformation of his spoken words, mangling language freely, but still he opened his mouth, desiring to sing aloud, speak in Polish, chant a canticle, go “boo” at the evening birds, or anything. Oh, anything.

  In the still calm quiet simple night, he began to fantasize. An assault that could occur. Punks from nowhere. They were all dressed in white. Like nurses.

  A moment previously, the darkness had sounded with crazy laughter. Unswallowed by pitch darkness, six all-white thugs, one black, one Asian, one Indian, none female, all alike, all burly, all wearing white clothing, entered his light and created a circle of fear. Bob froze, tensing smoothly. “Whuuuuuuuggggghhhhh yuuuuuu?”

  “We are the Christian punks, an’ we have found ya at last. Here is we. Now you must dee-fend yourself, or we will force PAMPHLETS upon you.” At this point, the head punk, white with reddish-brown hair and a mustache, demonstrated his meaning by showing Christian pamphlets at Mr Goneschlaw’s face

  WHHHIIIISKSNICK! Immediately, flashing silver sword cane. Bob dropped his mild-mannered pose as a barborous cripple. “RICHELUI!” he moaned hystersterically, coldly, bonechillingly, “YOU’RE TIME HAS COME! DRAW YOUR SWORDS!” Robert Goneschlaw (of old) stood with legs far apart, planted in full Teutonic Saber stance, with sword cane ready. He growled rumblingly low. Various sounds of Christian punk weaponry being produced. Knives, axes, poleaxes, Pulaskis, swords, spears, slingshots. A zip gun. Rubber bands, okay?

  “Wait! Wait!” came a gentle voice from out the shadows behind Bob. He turned slightly. She was on the side unsurrounded by the young punker fiends. She ran up to him, put her arms about him. Why, it was Caza Zooweiler.

  “These young men are CHRISTIANS. That means they turn the other cheek! They don’t fight with weapons, they’re willing to take blows! Can’t CHA tell? You know, like we women do, unless we train extremely well AND have Weapons and extremely tough male backup or are wow Sneaky…”

  Or, try very hard to do Otherwise, in a Kung Fu female way.

  “By the by, this is getting to be a very unfeminist story, Bob. Wake up!” So saying, she snapped her fingers twice in the air. The weird white boys disappeared. For now. Mr. Goneschlaw was left standing all alone. His speech impairment had returned. Funny, sword cane was still drawn. Cautiously, he inserted it back into its scabbard. Skkwwoooop. It was a nice sword cane, one that he really liked. From secret, designated, unintelligible board games played in Korea during the “quiet” 1950s, which were silent – yet you could hear grenades.

  A voice rang out from the eternal darkness of night:

  “And by the way, it was a really complex decision not beating you up, either, okay? We only want to get regular families and have wives and kids and stuff, okay?

  “We’re not out to get you older Catholic Protestant guys on every other street corner, okay?” Got it, Seneschal? Feel free already to go for a walk! A fun run, even. Just don’t get interviewed! Sheesh.” The imaginary voice faded away into the vast and almost appreciatively balmy darkness. Goneschlaw was feeling pretty balmy himself. He sure didn’t call anything names. Not even in his worst dreams.

  He would’ve gone home and called Virginia on the phone, but she couldn’t really understand him over it. He continued walking, passing the closed Fantastic Café, dark with night shuttered, proceeding down the east sidewalk of darkened Llewellyn. He passed Ridgeview Hospital, heading towards the freeway. As he walked, he became aware of the light streaming warily from His moon overhead. It was very romantic, the darknesssss.

  I don’t need that me, my life, my tongue, my mouth, my native language, not my soul of personal contact with people. NO. For I have disowned what no one has had, yet…I have my legs, and in this particular Logan’s bargain with fate, perhaps I will get to keep those insofar as I have let my mouth be the punished desire of my body, not my ambulatory instruments. As yet. Good riddance to my mouth, which filled at little provocation with swear words and low cultural barbs of pain, directed at all You Wonderful People, you, and for the namelessly weak and the spuriously strong, guttural jeers of banished misfortune, for you. Now I must suffer your speech, all the rest, and your good cheer or disgusted misfortune violence. Or not…

  …as I can always talk with ANYBODY who knows Ameslan.

  Sharone, Dave and Cloadia, also out for a night stroll, apparently to do their laundry, no, they are turning on 23rd, behind me, and heading nowhere I need…I can’t even yell hi at them, I can only wave. I have no interest in these young folks, or do I? And so they turn and go. I hope all is well. Sharone looks sad. She usually does…seems like we seldom talk. I need to make more friends, with somebody, soon.

  He stood, watching them easily thanks to the street lights, which bedazzled the darkness, able to clearly see them, taking and laughing, able to hear them, enjoying them and their good feelings, smiling almost proudly to himself. They disappeared around the corner of the house with a white picket fence. The very house that had cost his fantasy earlier. The pickets had turned into Christian punkers. Or so Bob thought.

  He wondered if they were going to the cemetery, popular day-hangout, near the park, and amenable to poky explorations and little philosophical triumphs of love.

  “YAAAUUUUGGHHHHHHHHHHAUUUUUGGHHHHH!!!!

  The shattering dreams they rang through the darkness, that froze his soul, that set flight to his feet, that set him racing in the screams’ direction; that continued as he swiftly reached the tiny local cemetery, his blood racing--perhaps dragging a little something in its wake--and his heart POUNDING, to where the three stood trapped, their shaking legs grabbed by an amoeboid gray and green cloud, earthen silly-putty mud-cloud, thrashing and screaming! And as Mr. Goneschlaw reached the last empty block before the cemetery, insanely looking both ways before crossing Silverdale, he manfully and lustily and rakishly drooled, and drew his sword cane once again, freely leaping full-bodily on the nightmarish, hideous THING (which helped the drooling slow down), slashing and slashing and slashing it until green ooze gunkily poured out, Bob the Dad asked Father, freeing his trapped powerless Children, who were just sort of standing around anyway, he Madly slashing the slime mold all about him.

  The young group stepped shakily out from the cemetery. Gon
eschlaw was a wonder of action to behold. They congregated, watching Bop fillet the thing as though he had enough rage and all the time in the world, and a bull whip. About the THING? It fileted!

  He rested not a moment. When it began dying, proper, chopped like liver, Dave and Cloadia and Sharone moved in and began stomping it to DEATH.

  Sharone sobbingly used big rocks on it, and Dave ran swiftly back to the apartment to get a can of gasoline and strike-anywhere matches. Natches!

  Little medium-size quivering Pieces of the damned tank waited patiently for Dave’s return. It actually didn't have much of a Choice. Cloadia swore at it in French. It swore back at her in something, but they couldn't tell what.

  It made weird smells, popping noises as the terrified People (makes ‘em human) burned every piece they could find. Just think, if the Japanese had attacked our West Coast… every blasted, twisted one. Every Bugger! And standing still, they were not sure if all the pieces have been found to this day, which is on the weekend…perhaps some did Escape, Wreaking Havoc. In movies and films, maybe videos, and an occasional TV show by mercurial Jews with MS.

  Artie quoth later, over an ice-cold dripping beer (AHHHH) at the Krakatoa, that he'd found “somethin’ blueish unusual and blob-like” quivering in his BLT sandwich, which he ordered every Friday at the bar, perched on a stool and puttin’ down four tall brewskies. He said he went ahead and ate it. Nothing happened, just his usual arcanely polite burping.

  “I thought it was blue-grass lettuce, URPH, leafs.”

  WE ALL WALKED over to the water, Shell Lake, and there they were - Harmin Boole’s “kids.” They were his, because he didn't have any kids. Well, Harmin had been half of a one-child couple. Through magic means, which probably had something to do with how much his wife liked to bake, and how many thousands of chocolate-chip cookies she used to hand to “known strangers," there was a large accumulated crowd of varying sizes and ages of kids, possibly all white kids (although this was not necessarily the case), and who were his slavish followers (remember Wilma Rudolph? That way, she led) and devoted fans. Also, it was reputed that Harmin occasionally indulged in a paganic cult, due to his never going to church on Sundays. Any church.

  “In m time,” he said, “everyone else did. So they thought I was a real freako. But we were pretty normal, after all, turned out." The paganic cult nowadays involved worship over Harmin’s future grave, which was planted with vegetables, beans and flowers a veritable pea patch.

  Once a year, a special kid, often a boy, was chosen to attend the Feast of Summer Wealth on the Harper Point Ferry, where he was supposed to steal a single loaf of bread.

  Preferably whole grain, though a good white bread sufficed. One’s expensive.

  Then Harmin, in ceremonial style, would bury the loaf, plastic wrapper and all if it had one, and his own grave. Perhaps it was symbolic, a cere-mony (Ceres, Goddess of the harvest) involving the Staff of Life (Harmin’s fertility producing one blood son, the aforementioned book thief II), and dozens of ‘adoptees’), being laid to rest. A stolen life?

  “Maybe he's a tad bit touched in the haid, you know, by the fairies,” frankly observed Mrs. Bitters. She had her own problems. She wanted to find a better job than barkeeping the Krakatoa. Previously, she had taken the lowpaying job because a more lucrative one would've interfered with her husband's unemployment benefits. But Ed finally settled the case with his former boss, receiving three-quarters of his full retirement benefits from Ridgeview. He would also eventually receive additional benefits from his new job, when he completely retired. I digress.

  So, there we were at the lake, and the kids were carefully picking up shells and putting them into sandy cloth bag. They were picking out white ones.

  The bags looked like old-fashioned flowers sacks. "Don't forget the quartz rocks," said a little tow-headed girl to her compatriot. He, tall and lean and tawny-looking, smirked asininely. “I got 20, all of them white." Another kid, in obvious disregard of rock preference, stuffed pretty, multi-colored quartzes into his bag. The beach along the water fairly glowed with these gems, once uncovered from the dirt and sand. The sand itself was crushed quartzes in kaleidoscope.

  All at once, I was staring into a quizzical, tear-streaked face. Half my height. An innocent eight-year-old face. Sadness in miniature. "Mr. Boole died last week."

  I thought so. “Yes. We went to the Krakatoa, and he wasn't there. Not for five days." They sure are bad about letting children into bars around here, I thought. I poked at the shells and stones in the sand with a stick; they rattled and tinkled like elvin bells, like raindrops on a tin roof.

  “He died in the hospital. I dunno why.” So saying, the sandy child continued poking about for shells. Saragina called the hospital on the Tomato Grocery outside the payphone.

  A nurse told us old Harmin had died of heart failure following a massive stroke.

  The kids had been assigned by their parents, former "children" of Harmin’s, to keep a daily eye on him at his home. He'd lived alone for years. They used to drop in occasionally and check on him. One remorseless day, the children found him on the floor, clutching the phone.

  The hospital pronounced him dead on arrival. He seemed to be grinning.

  I decided that Gabe should have given Roscoe to Harmin instead of Saragina. Roscoe would have helped. Old Harmin would've been less alone.

  “Rotten difficult task to give little kids, dontcha think?” I asked. Everyone winced nervously. But “Beau” and Saragina and Caza and Artie agreed. "Next time we’ll arrange paid help for our elderly friend." Next time. Sara was only studying diet for geriatrics, not home care. Caza sighed deeply, recalling her care of Artie recently. She wished she'd known Harmin was in need. But Artie came first…

  …we walked with the kids to the cemetery, Hawthorne Cemetery on Tomato Street, and we helped them pile the smooth white stones on top of the recently-smoothed grave, the headstone, and the grave and headstone of the wife of Harmin Boole. One stone per hundred cookies. The veggies and flowers were all plowed under, like Harmin.

  I couldn't help but notice that what we did bore a close similarity to a way Ashkenazic (check the last two syllables) Jews honor their dead, but I said Not A Word, not freckly me, no Sir y M’am, and kept it all to myself.

  The little kid who liked colored quartzes got away with strolling them on the new grave. They brought back memories of the flowers, making the site much less stark and intimidating. But there would be no more garden among the graves.

  One kid wanted to keep some of the flashier stones. “They’re really purty!” he exclaimed. Ex-plained…to make less plain? To attempt to exclaim…is to make it stranger. Maintain my mood of children surrounding grave danger of elderly man, unknowing what death means except it is okay in animated cartoons.

  Well, that was how they “buried” him…

  --Mabel “School” Jones, writer of itchiness, pastorality an’ sheer bilious doubt, First Legit Author of Rama, WA, USA, America, the World, Gaia, Gondwanaland, the Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, and the outskirts of black Cleveland. There isn’t much beyond there, you can ask any cop who patrols the corners.

 

  Her shoes fell off, one at time. “Do you desire a church, or would a National Park be preferable?”

  Gabe’s toothsome grin like a lantern glowed, turra-lurra. All you girls remember how green it was?

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and willing to run from there; “I am sorry I said it to you.”

  She gulped. “Well, my folks went to a Presbyterian church,” and she ground her teeth at the probable monstrosity of the lying involved in her words, “but, but it’s too many lost and lonely miles far, far away. So are they. Uh, yep. Well. How about in Shell Park? Nature is so clean, pure, and natural, really. No, REALLY.

  “Oh, and please, put me down, my back absolutely kills me in this position.”

  Sara winced with the urge to recontact terra firma, her family of origin, and her shoes before her pantyhose ran.
But then again, she was on Cloud Nine, there to live, breeze and love forever, or until icky divorce reared its ugly head.

  Putting HER down? Who’s ALLOWED? Immediately, Gabe did so. Osculation followed. They were married in June - in the deep, abuse-victim Goddess whose name is Juno, wife of Jupiter or Zeus. She judges people who help her.

  A bloomin’ traditional Hippies in the Park wedding. Even was a white layer cake, trimmed in gold, which was instantly deceived by fire ants. Artie wore a whole suit, no tie, with a carnation boutonniere in his red headband. Saragina held squirming, smarmy, warmly furry Roscoe in her arms instead of a flow’ry bouquet; when he couldn't take it anymore she took the yellow and red rose with stubbly white stick flowers bunch to her abundant front and masked the “Unwell,” it all going with her slightly off-white then and, of COURSE y’all, satin wedding gown, derived from a source you wouldn't believe in, because You keep such careful track, or something. I can't! I can't stand it, I…am not a kitten.

  Roscoe sported a flower collar and smelled herbal. His chunky grey head bobbled atop his orange tabby body, while he squirmed and mewed. The whole gang from the Krakatoa attended, along with Sara’s work friends from Ridgeview and some out-of-town acquaintances of Caza’s. The latter sure did look like farm workers. Perhaps the pitchforks they sat on, as folding chairs, under bales of hay.

  Harmin Boole’s “kids” threw bread at the birds, attracting well over an hundred geese and ducks, almost twice as many birds as wedding guests. They made an effective cloud cover. They flipped around the people all throughout the ceremony, the older kids timing it so that a flock of massive Canadian geese burst and flew as the minister pronounced Gabriello Sancto and Saragina DeSoto husband and wife Gabe had written in for a copy of his birth certificate, and that enabled him to grab up the marriage one too. For twenty-five bucks. Artie paid it. “Rahs!”

  The kids simply threw small pebbles at the flighty geese. And as they flew, those Canuck geese, off for another drinking spell elsewhere, conversed with each other about the probability of their maneuvering into a defensive squadron and attacking certain Asiatical women, and you know who you are…kidding!

  …but what you say makes the case. And as they flew, those Canuck geese honked, flitting cross the sky similar to swans. When pearl-white black-beaked lengthy trumpeters swoop across the daytime sky, angels are Real. I saw four at once, whitely flocking into Heaven. “Those are the original angels, folks!”

  Gone much too soon!

  END OF THIS BOOK – I WON!!!

  Nah, not ‘til the short, brown, stubby fat lady sings. I have freckles. Nasal ones. In my inner sanctum, where the wild finger rides. Kleenex, pullease…

  CAZA DIES AT dawn, eventually, when she runs out of books to balance—Gabe is keeping all those books, anyway. WWII started when three bums crashed a Unionville shop front, setting up an 800 number - accessible only to multi-line phone system with a fax.

  The evergreen, emerald local park had generated that ol’ slime mold out of the remains of a dead prostitute from 1879. It was melted by firefighters’ blow torches in the used car lot nearby; Gabe eventually bought a convertible.

  A small piece of the slime, disguised as chewing gum, affixes under the left side of “Beau’s” peeling, slip-covered yellow back seat. It might not go away soon, but Gabie and Artie use nails to fix it into place for now.

  Gabe maybe dies instead of Caza, because Sara’s apartment is twenty degrees hotter than the outside, due to its fireplace and twelve real and smelly lion-skin rugs insulating it; and the very first time she forgot to open the flue…SMOKE GETS IN YOUR (boom) EYYYESSS!!! While Dave and Cloadia knotted their marital ties, Sharone immediately landed her Los Angelinos job, whilst Dan Nuts followed her part of the way out to southern Cal. And then left her for Chrissy Goneschlaw, moving in irregardless of his own sanity.

  Ridgeview hired too many whites after firing Ed, but they were girls straight out of college, and they took lesser, lower-salaried positions. Tomato Grocery is owned and operated seven days per week by a Japanese-Jewish family, named Horoshakiwitz. They know the ropes. All the townie girls hit the hairdressers at once one Sunday and descended into ‘doing’ each other.

  The dead Mexican was really a drowning victim from the river gully. He may have lived, and then pulled a weird phosphorus joke on Caza. The “obscene” phone call for Gabe was from Mike Loughlin, the crip with a phone account at the Krak, and it was a wrong number.

  Phoebe ran off with Lomanian Smith, who was a secret hetero-womano-lover-person. When they can find them. They’re killer as a couple, now. The pidgies in Gabe’s story left for Capistrano to replace the swallows who no longer go there; they hit Miami Beach nowadays, to kibbitz with the gators. Lotsa gators in the Air. Sharone Bitters and Cloadia Tager finally quietly got together (you knew!) They became one of the first lesbian couples to adopt children in Washington State, petitioning to adopt Cloadia’s baby from her marriage with Dave. This worked because it turned out, despite all appearances, Dave was DEAD!

  Dan joined the gay LA community, alright, but nobody had sex with him due to his ears and the AIDS scare. He ended up on the drunk ward of intensive care, where he re-met and rehashed with Nurse Bitters. Chrissy…caught up with him, after Dan lived with her for over five years, getting her pregnant, then leaving her for “a cute boy” down the hall in their Los Angeles building…’nuf said. No, Danny Boy had been looking at Gay Porno on Chrissy’s desktop computer. He had no intention of leaving Chrissy. But she caught him surfing porn, and ordered him summarily to leave their house. In a veil of frustrated tears! Dan would’ve been a good family man; he paid full child support, forever. His further misadventures are too lengthy to recount here, and warrant yet another galumphing book!

  Gabe was caught dealing with Satan and fishing for laughs to get his poetry published in a hard-cover anthology. They charge you, and you get one page with a byline. Yick. Then, he entered a $15 contest with millions of entrants, and lost, while Sara made the Honorable Mentions list and lost.

  Mabel was askeered because Dave pulled a “resurrection” and was followed around thereafter (gaining avid disciples)—but they were all in weird prior backstories BEFORE Dave’s vanishing act! Tom DaL., natch, does not ‘go monkees’ but eventually remarries; the Dame performs a church basement wedding. Once Ned and Jeannie divorce, due to Ned’s “innocent philandering,” Tom the woppish dago marries Jeannie, right? Gets yet another divorce, becomes the Personal Care Attendant (ahem, plug plug plug for that job for the disabled, independent living!) or in other words Home Health Care Aide for the aging and dying Bitters couple.

  Bob Goneschlaw literally “got gone.” He married an old flame of Harmin Boole’s, getting hitched in Dame Gretchley’s basement. Then he left her for the Dame! She’d been on his mind too much, and he on hers. They’re happy forever, living somewhere out in the wilds of Canada, where everybody keeps trying to go. The border is ridiculous, policed by Pro-White Racist Scumbags.

  Fred is a stranger, hailing from out of town, who met and befriended Artie on the rehab ward. Like I said!!! Actually, maybe an exemplified Manfred is involved. Fred’s last name, like Jesus, remains a mystery.

  DISABLED | RETARDED | DEVELOPMENTAL ENDING (By Caza, whose school system claimed she was “developmentally disabled” when she aced a test meant for boys alone, a special awareness mathematics test):

  Fred is a Black stranger, hailing Fr’ out town, who enabled Artie on the rehab ward. “Like ah said!!!” Meanwhile, he and his DisAbled “male” buddy, a guy turning out to not have survived the truck crash “bak ‘ere, SOMETIMES ago,” got the first Wheelchair Accessible house built in British Columbia, Canada, by Gabe, Artie and their other crew members, ‘cluding Fred. The ghost of Shirley, Frederick’s two-sex, awesomely cute companion in the cab, who was crushed in the accident, haunted the WA house - until they freeway moved it to Alberta.

  Mark Campos is the genuine name of “M,” the Mexican-American knife-fighting
maniac this book is based on, contributing to it muchos. Who? His Markness, the Prince of Darkness. I am Karen S. Cole, the actual name of the German Cherokee Jewess Shiksa weirda…NO, Artie wrote it. Barack Obama only contributed something. I am 5’ 4” tall, was huge in the short-assed Philippines, and now I weigh exactly 250 leaping lbs. In English foot smells, and my left arm is an imaginary aardvark that sweats blood. SNOW, IT’S NOT!!! My husband’s name is private, and he calls himself “Daddy.” We’re all from Archie Comics. Recently.

  Roscoe turned out to be a Girl Kitty, after all. A regular Pussycat. She dumped her kittens into the lint-filled back of the Late Night Laundry, from whence she had come, mysteriously appearing in Gabe’s laundry basket. 23 kittens, all mewing and alive, in spontaneous rainbow colors. One of ‘em held aloft two heads, working, meowing, hungry ones! Best mouser ever, in Rama. She teamed with the area’s better ratter dogs, gorgeous collies from outlying farms who workd the overflowing grain silos. They raced around their kitten, protecting her from imaginary harm, barking silently as their yelps had been removed, for Christ’s sake!

  Saragine scooped that freakshow kitty up, naming him Amos and Andy, or Famous Amos. Boooooooooooooooooooo…t’was my childhood nickname…the Boo.

  CAZA EXOTICALLY DANCED, quixotically, erotically, for Artie in his and their single-roomed apartamento, a ramshackling over-large studio. It really was a studio, with eastern exposure and half-bay windows, meant for half-bay artists, especially those not necessarily having a terrific southern exposure.

  She used teeny metal finger cymbals, which were an ode to Carlos Castanets and his mentor Don Juano; she wore a flowing green-blue sequined gown, sporting shiny Persian slippers, imported strictly from Taiwan. They ate off Big Fat China, where all the concentration camps originally got started. “Maybe you just accused them of founding the universal school system.” Only the table was shithim wood. A deeply green jewel, a Jewish Stone from The Wizard of Oz (and NOT “Wicked,” which I hate for rescuing the Wrong Witch) was idly but firmly stuck, buied up to his neck in her navel. Why rescue an evil person, and leave someone else to……..

  Was the gem a genuine natural emerald, craftily smuggled from guanoesque Mexican mines? Perhaps. Why else was Miguel Shuba so concerned? Artie sang as she danced, playing a rapturous Eastern melody on his wooden flute. His voice clear and strong, noble, proud…free…not for sale…US Marine…like the God Poseidon, who knew somebody helps those who truly assist others. Vaguely.

  “Mah lady mine, mah lady mine, fahner than the best of wahn,

  Ah loves you all that love can be

  For mah love is vaster than the ocean

  And your love is deeper than the sea.

  “Lady, mah lady, come lay down with me

  What games we can play when we re-combine

  What songs can be sung…you are so sublime!

  Ah wants to go ‘way with you, alls ah wants is to play with you…

  Artie began a long, slowly dwindling musicum on his sakahatcheck flute, which was Japanese, tubular, and holy. It lovingly sounded with keening beauty and quite grace intertwined perfectly yet organically what Caza’s dancing.

  She jingled arcanely and softly, tinkling bright noises of jangling glee.

  “I love you my Artie, I really do! There’s no more need to party, and I wanna belong to you. Forever let’s sever the emptiness of never.” As you know, temptations abound when you’re in love. Yet this behavior is theirs alone. If Caza is a Mom before she dies, she’ll be the best temporary one she can be. And if Artie is a Dad…dang, where’s that blowtorch for the cockroaches?

  Laughter, dancing, singing and prancing merrily for hours. No neighbors complained. It would mean sweat, pounding walls, knocking on the door with sanguine merciful knowledge. Medieval stiff-backed wooden plastic chairs…with verses written on the backs, twining with flowers: Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.

  SHE LOOKED AT Gabe like, I mean business, Mr. Stranger. We’ve even sat together.

  Too bad…

  “Okay, that’s it. I’m going to college, gonna study Diet. The human diet.”

  I am, thought Gabe; sort of.

  Gabriella/Gabriello “Beau” Hooter Sancto took Saragina De Soto’s lovely hand. He held it, gazing up at her reluctantly.

  “I’ll miss you so much. How will I live without you? I love you.”

  Saragina saw what was plainly written in Gabe’s face. She suppressed an urge to chock. “Gabe, it’s all right. I won’t be gone for long. But I don’t want to commute. I hate traffic so much, I…” She stopped talking.

  “No, I can’t stand to be without you. I’d rather be dead. Tell you what…”

  “What,” begged Saragina, breathless? Normally, her air intake was pretty good. “I’ll go to college with you.” Gabe was dead serious.

  “You will? Whatever would you study?”

  “Electronics. I want to learn how to hot-wire a house. That is to say, I want to learn Home Construction, Remodeling, and ordinary exterior work. Also, I want to further my studies in carpentry, masonry, interior exterior finish work. You wanna learn how to do high-up wooden cabinets?”

  “Migosh; I’ve been wantin’ to learn how to build things! Why, this is such a shock. It’s so sudden. Then again, it’s gonna take another two to four years. Do you want a bachelor’s?” There was a moment of absolute stillness. Gabe never asked Sara where she was going to work. Not after the books. They sold, were selling, and although it was more niche than best seller, they were moving.

  “NOOO!!!!!!!!” yelled Gabe, bundling her into his octopus arms. “I want nothin’ less than STEADY MARRIAGE!” They osculated, fancy word fer kissing. Saragina had to bend purty far downwards. Even so, he craned up, and she felt her long legs elevating off the ground. Ah wusn’t there, I was busy w’Caza…hey, now y’know the Blendman wrote mosta this - parts Gabe and Sara-rogino didn’t do!

  Caza edited it some, but mostly she does bookskeepin’ fer people, not novels fer starangers…Saragina tooks on a new career, re’glar fiction writer. They say Black lady authors knows what they’s a doin’. I can barely unnerstand what she pens, but it’s all good. She gave up on dietician 100 miles ‘way, stayed on part time as a dietary aide here in town, and Gabe keeps struggling on, too. He’s basically studyin’ carpentry ‘lectrical hookups under me and some other dudes, the types who act like Tarzan swingin’ thru the evergreens. I think they both’ll go to college someat someday, but who needs it when you got me?

  I think it’s purtier in Rama than it’s ever been in Helena, Montana, where my Mom was born, and my uncle too. And my gramma’s kids…Caza, stop pickin’ yer nose and come over here and give the Blendman a good time. I stop drinkin’ fer you, and…what d’you mean, fix my dinner? Hokay! You sit over there and rest, and I’ll gitcha another pitcher of limedade. Grab me a silly straw!

  Meantimes, Gabe manfully hoisted his Sara. He bent o’er backwards. She swung around - loop de loop. As she gaily flew and swooped, arching her long body like a beautiful spotted-grey seagull harp seal, hoppin’ fum pier to pier on the Seattle Waterfront, nestled amid ferry boats pullin’ out loadsa cars, foot passengers and soundin’ their dismal fog horns, she sang loudly thistly, a song played soully on Rama’s WKRQZ on alternate Tuesday weeks:

  “Maybe baby taybe waybe,

  Maybe baby taybe waybe,

  Maybe…baby…waybe…getaybe!”

  …to be continuously continued, by 10 teensy brownie-townie fingers and 10 wiggle-butt butterfly-moth combo toes.

  Turning and turning the world’s a gyre, deepmost over my head…

  Yearning and learning the worlds on fire; it’s deepmost ‘til the end,

  ‘Til the end…baby seek letters inspired, carry us siiiiide by side,

  And hand in hand in hand we will ride, over Versailles. Turn your magical

  Eyes around and around. There is a looooonely sound. Carry us throooogh

  The sky, “Les
Bicyclettes de Belsize” …rewritten part NOT by Engelbert Humperdink

  THE END – Gabriello/Mark Campos, Saragina/Darlene Hayes, Artemus/Max Imholte, Caza/Chiara Zaratkewitz…take a bow! These four people were the basis for my “main men!” Mark was my Mexican-American boyfriend, Darlene was my Black nextdoor neighbor, Max was my hippie newspaper boss, and Chiara was an Eastern-European American who married a Latino. All good friends!

  www.rainbowriting.com – only one “w” please; karen@rainbowriting.com – same Ghost Writer, Inc. – Book ghostwriting services. We handle manuscript, screenplay, script, music and lyrics writing and editing. 180+ diverse writers, editors, marketers and others - promotions, sales, publishing, optioning assistance through our partner agencies. We do it all for you, for upfront or “on spec” payments!

  Books by Karen S. Cole:

  The Rainbow Horizon

  A Tale of Goofy Chaos

  Woody Allen Makes a Scary Sandwich

  Horror Pastiche: Stories & Poems

  The Book of Nice Monsters

  Or a Few Scurrilous Drawings

  Future Work in Progress:

  The Men’s Baby Club

  How Suburbia Went Out – Thataways