Elephant Bangs Train (5 page)

'Yeah, I'm lookin' around down here.'

Twiller lay on the bunk. 'Be nice to bring somebody here.'

'Yeah, your mother,' said Crutch. 'Let's go.'

They went outside and walked down through the trees to the stream. Twiller jumped on to a rock in the middle of the rushing water. Crutch stood on the shore. From out of the woods darted the kitchen girl.

'Hubba, hubba!' said Crutch.

The girl stared at Twiller for a moment, then leapt from rock to rock across the stream. A bugle sounded through the trees. Spider Pronko and several scouts of the Snake Patrol dashed out of the woods.

Crutch gave the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. The girl disappeared over the river bank and Spider and the Snakes ran after her. Twiller jumped up the riverbank and followed them into the woods. The girl was ahead, weaving through the trees. Twiller put on his speed and passed the Snakes, then pulled up beside Spider, whose wind was shot from smoking.

'Stop followin' me, man!' gasped Pronko.

Twiller passed him. The girl ran through a meadow and Twiller ran in after her. She was surefooted and fast and her long hair danced as she ran. Twiller raced through the bush, afraid to catch her.

She jumped a fallen tree and he followed, through bands of sunlight, into the tall pines. Down a grey avenue of trees they ran, feet falling softly on the needle floor. She stopped suddenly, turned, faced him.

He skidded to a halt. Her eyes were dark and she was smiling.

From behind them a Boy Scout jumped out of the grass, waving a pair of semaphore flags. The girl darted away. Out of the bush came a team of Signal Scouts, whooping and waving their flags overhead. Twiller was surrounded, then passed.

The girl was far ahead, running through a furrowed field. Twiller ran hard and passed the other scouts, coming up close behind her once again. She leapt a stone wall and Twiller leapt after her, followed by the Signal Scouts, flags waving.

'What's going on here, men?' Mister Snow was standing in the road with his compass reading class.

Twiller saluted. 'Capture the Flag, sir.' The girl was nowhere in sight.

'I thought it was bird-watching.'

'Yes sir.' Twiller saw Spider Pronko sneaking along the wall, up the road.

'What's your name?' asked Mister Snow, taking out his notebook.

'Twiller, sir.'

'Twiller, I want no more foolishness from you. The woods are filled with birds.'

'Yes sir.'

'Carry on.'

Twiller marched up the road. Once around the bend he began to run. The road wound through the forest and he ran along through the dust, heart pounding. The lodge came into view. He ran across the field and up the porch steps, into the living room. The kitchen door was locked. He put his ear to the keyhole. There was a sharp click behind him. He turned. A long thin switch blade was open at his throat.

'Stop followin' me, Boy Scout,' said Spider Pronko.

At sunset the crickets began.

'If you count the seconds between their croaking,' said Crutch, 'you can figure out the temperature. I learned that from Scoutmaster Ramsey.'

'What's the temperature?' asked Twiller.

'I get 110 degrees.'

Night moths fluttered against the lighted windows of the lodge and flew in the door whenever it opened. The troop gathered around the fireplace singing

O the deacon went down

To the cellar to pray

Spider Pronko was in a corner, singing to the Snakes.

O the moon shone bright

On the nipple of her teat

The wind blew up her nightie

The kitchen door opened. The girl came in wearing a buckskin jacket. She walked to the window beside the fireplace and raised her hips on to the sill. The singing around the fireplace grew more intense:

He fell asleep

And he slept all day

I ain'na gonna grieve my Lord no more

and Spider harmonized quietly with the Snakes in the corner.

The sight I saw was against the law

Jesus Christ Almighty

With medals jingling on his chest, Eagle Scout Billy Dalton moved in beside the girl and offered her a toasted marshmallow on the end of a stick, which she accepted.

Twiller and Crutch pushed through the crowd to her side.

'Hubba, hubba,' said Crutch.

'You run fast,' said Twiller. She looked at him with a smile. An elbow stabbed him in the back.

'How's it goin', baby?' Spider Pronko moved in alongside her
.

A bat squeaked down from the rafters. The troop let out a yell as it fluttered over their heads. Spider grabbed Twiller's campaign hat and leapt on to a table.

'Don't kill it!' shouted Mister Snow.

The bat circled the room. Spider swung the hat and the bat disappeared inside it. 'Here you are, sir,' said Spider, handing the hat over to Mister Snow.

The Scouts crowded around. The bat lay in the crown of the hat, its neck limp. 'A fine thing,' said Mister Snow, and walked out of the lodge with the hat in his hand.

Twiller turned back to the fireplace. The girl was gone.

Scoutmaster Ramsey blew his whistle. 'Lights out, fellows.'

Twiller ran on to the porch, looking for her. He saw a figure come out of the trees. It was Mister Snow.

'Excuse me, sir,' said Twiller, stepping off the porch, 'may I have my hat back?'

'We frightened him to death,' said Mister Snow, and handing over the hat, walked past Twiller into the lodge.

Twiller looked inside the hat. All right, he thought, someone died in my hat. He put it on and walked to the back of the lodge, looking for her through the kitchen windows. It was dark and silent in the kitchen. He returned to the front of the lodge and stared into the trees. The sky was bright with moonlit clouds.

Crutch came up behind him. 'Whattya see, a bear?'

Scoutmaster Ramsey walked on to the porch. 'Let's have no trouble tonight, Twiller.' During last year's campout, held on a local golf course, Twiller had been found sleepwalking in the sand trap.

'Yes sir,' said Twiller. He felt himself rush into the trees to search for her, and stepped back on to the porch.

'You can bet some guys won't be sleepin',' said Crutch, unrolling his sleeping bag.

Twiller took off his hat and crawled into his bedroll. He felt light-headed and dizzy, as if he were floating out of his sleeping bag. A flashlight beam shone into his eyes.

'Where's Pronko?' asked Scoutmaster Ramsey, pointing the light on Spider's paper bag.

'Latrine, sir,' said Twiller.

'See that he gets in line.'

'Yes sir.'

Twiller lay back down. One by one the flashlights and lanterns went out. He could hear logs falling in the fireplace. The camp was still.

'Look,' whispered Crutch.

Something was moving on the other end of the porch. A dark figure crawled from bunk to bunk, then scurried past the door and slipped between Twiller and Crutch. It was Roscoe Benjamin, smallest Scout in the troop. 'Spider gave her his knife,' he whispered. 'They're down in the cabin.' He crawled off the porch and around the corner of the lodge.

Twiller lay staring at the moon. He slipped out of his sleeping bag and walked quietly through the lodge doorway, stepping over sleeping bags until he found Mister Snow on the floor in front of the fireplace. He tugged gently on the old man's bedroll. Mister Snow turned over.

'Yes?'

'Sir, I don't feel so good.'

'What's wrong? Do you have to go the bathroom?'

'No sir.'

'Just a minute,' said Mister Snow, 'we don't want to wake the others.' He crawled out of his sleeping bag and they walked on to the porch.

'What is it?' asked Mister Snow.

'I feel like I'm falling,' said Twiller.

'You say you fell?'

'No sir.'

'You don't hurt anywhere?'

'No sir.'

'Go back to sleep, my boy,' said Mister Snow, patting him on the shoulder. 'It was just a dream.'

The Jewel of Amitaba

V
EILED ONLY
by her long black hair, and a necklace of elbow macaroni, Adria La Spina, the beautiful pasta heiress, snaked her hips to electric guitars, while the paparazzi shot their flashbulbs off around her. Notable among the photojournalists was Norton Blue, the celebrated pornographer, with his sensitive Polaroid.

'Let's have a shot of your eggplant, my dear!' shouted the depraved Blue, scuttling on his knees across the patio, in a cardboard nose.

La Spina villa was built on the rolling Roman hills, its balconies overlooking the ruins of antiquity. Music and laughter filled the estate, and several squat ladies in black, whose custom for years had been to pass the quiet groves of La Spina on the way to market, peered pop-eyed through the gates at the young pasta heiress, who by now had shed her macaroni necklace and danced
tutta nuda
through the trees.

'
Prostituta
!' shouted one of the women, and tearing a length of pepperoni from her shopping bag, shook it through the iron gates.

A large Doberman pinscher flashed across the lawn and ripped the pepperoni from her grasp, devouring it just beyond her reach, his fierce little eyes on her all the while.

'
O-O—Diavolo
!' sputtered the woman, and marched off to report the disgrace of La Spina to Monsignor Farina, prelate of the local parish.

'O.K., fellas, hit it!' Jeekers Peltz, derelict leader of 'Jeekers and the Stools', gave the downbeat. Several seconds later the hallucinatory music of his filthy untrained group shattered the stillness which had briefly surrounded La Spina during lunch, and the savage chaos of the number woke the house-guests from their afternoon slumber.

Hedvig von Cuckle, daughter of German Chancellor Weiner von Cuckle, splashed into the rose-marble fountain, clad only in a brass chain given her by the American hoodlum Bad Mother Hole, who slept mouth open on his motorcycle near poolside, a Nazi helmet over his eyes; beautiful Luisa Pina-Bodega came riding across the lawns of La Spina on an irredeemable Cuban donkey famous for a decadent nightclub act in old Havana; Lieutenant Colonel Miriam Boombeh, on leave from the Israeli Defence Force, was in her plain army underwear, teaching hand-to-hand combat to the paparazzi. All over La Spina, guests were stirring, led by Adria La Spina, upon the front balcony, shaking first one hip, then the other, up and around in devastating rhythm, as Jeekers and the Stools went slowly deaf on the patio.

'More porn, my dear!' shouted Norton Blue, his face flushed with intoxicants. He was in a refined Royal Canadian Exercise Corps posture, flat on his back on the patio, a bottle of Canadian Club balanced on his forehead. Beside him in a deck chair was Cojones Colada, the jackbooted Cuban revolutionary, who had managed to stop his powerful '59 Studebaker outside the gates of La Spina.

'I knew a woman whose breasts were shaped like bananas,' said Blue. 'You would have liked her.'

Jes, jes,' said Colada.

'She was a melancholy creature, of course,' said Blue, sipping from his bottle.

'Gentlemen,' said Duval, the French philosopher, joining the group at poolside, the usual liquorice pipe in his mouth, and sharing, as was his habit, a trench coat with his mother.

'I am searching,' said Blue, raising his head, 'for the lady with three breasts. I glimpsed her once in a dream. She had a third moon on her neck.'

Madame Duval made a puzzled face. 'Surely, a goitre . . .'

'Madame, a man in my execrable profession does not mistake such detail.' Blue struggled to raise himself on his elbow. 'If I had such a woman, I could topple a banana republic, install myself as
presidente
, wear an ice cream vendor's uniform, eh, Colada?'

'Jes, jes,' said Colada, not listening. His eyes were on Adria coming towards them, for she wore only an old railroader's handkerchief tied loosely around her caboose.

With her was grape drink king Sophocles Trismegistus, gesticulating. He had named an orchard after Adria, but had yet to squeeze her pear. 'I am a small celebration for my daughter giving,' said Trismegistus, as they approached the poolside group. 'She has reach the age of consequence. I was wonder,' he said, touching Adria's wrist, 'if you pleasure us by attendance.'

'Sorry,' said Adria, 'I don't like society balls.'

'Señorita por favor
,' said Cojones Colada, standing and extending his chair, his hawk-eyes bulging. The previous evening she had refused his celebrated sugar cane.

The crumbling opium smuggler G appeared spectrally at poolside, like a cloud out of the blue water. Opening a pearl case, he handed thin gold-tipped cigarettes around to the guests.

'
Ah,' said Blue, as a wreath of pungent smoke encircled the group,
'
you have recently returned from Tangier.'

'
When I was a little girl . . .' said Adria, smoking dreamily. She slipped down in her chair. Her gently rounded belly lifted to the blue southern sky and she closed her eyes. The years fell away. She was a little girl in the kitchen. Uncle Dido had come for Sunday breakfast after Church. They were alone.
Show me your woo-woo
, said Uncle Dido.
I give you chocolate
. She stood in the sunlight. A crystal bowl glittered on the table. Uncle Dido put on his Micka da Mouse mask, and crawled beneath the table.

'
Señorita
, how you like hob of Prime Miniskir of Cuba?' The voice of Cojones Colada shattered the glass bowl, the memory faded. Adria stood.

'
I am going to the East.'

The silver-jetted bird rose into the sky. By strange coincidence, sitting beside Adria in first class was Sebastian Cloud, the
enfant terrible
of Europe at the time, dressed as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

'Might I interest you in a sacrament?' he said, and before a thousand miles were gone, Adria and he were deep in ecumenical embrace.

The lights of the Japanese islands appeared and they came down in Tokyo at midnight. They roamed the streets of the great city, played the pinball machine, fed the rooster of good luck. In the temple of Buddha Amitaba, Sebastian, pretending prayer, popped the jewel from the idol's forehead into his tall mitre hat.