Going For a Beer

by Robert Coover

  Twenty-third variation

  B3, much faster than the barefoot intruder and knowing the woods as she does not, is able to bound ahead of her or race from one side or the other, thus forcing her to change directions over and over until she is lost and crying out. He is tempted to do with her as B1 did, but is enjoying too much the overlapping chase.

  B1 is watching this madcap frolic from the upstairs window. When he woke to find the little vixen missing and the window open, he felt at first alarm, then wistfully happy. She had helped him rebound from the onset of despair. Let her go. Now he sees the game that B3 is playing. If he brings her back, that will also make him happy.

  As G runs frantically through the woods, now in one direction, now another, she feels pursued by a dozen wild things, coming at her from all sides. Her feelings of exhilaration have evaporated. She has had strange nightmares of being treed by baying dogs. Perhaps this is another, she thinks, tears streaming down her cheeks. Perhaps she is still in the big one’s bed.

  Bounding joyfully, B3 is in effect encircling her, driving her back toward their cottage. She is getting scratched as she races through the brambly woods, appetizing crimson droplets appearing on her hairless flanks. Sometimes he lets her run awhile, imagining escape, before closing in on her again. Making the panicky creature run before cooking her, he knows, will add to her wild spicy flavor.

  B2 watches B3’s extravaganza from the kitchen window, admiring his leaps and bounds and laughing at the intruder’s distant cries. B1 let her go, obeying tradition; B3 is changing it. She chops up nuts and dried fruits for dessert, stirs the sauce with a wooden spoon. A spider falls from the rafters into the sauce like a kind of punctuation. She stirs it in.

  G can run no more. She crouches in the hollow of a tree, stinging all over, her breath coming in sobbing gasps. The littlest one, laughing, picks her up by the nape and holds her high, swats her just for fun. He has been toying with her as a cat toys with a crippled mouse. G feels like the punchline of a bad joke.

  Twenty-fourth variation

  With playful pokes and pinches, B3, wishing the chasing game could have gone on longer, prods the forlorn intruder toward the cottage where the others await with forks and knives, old B1 in his nightcap, B2 in her apron. Someone has been tasting my porridge! . . . tasting my porridge! they sing, dancing a rocking cadence from foot to foot, rising and falling. Someone has been sitting in my chair! . . . sitting in my chair! B3 proudly lifts his trophy by her hair. The others show their teeth and clack their forks and knives together, continuing their stately round. Someone has been lying in my bed! . . . lying in my bed! B3 lowers the intruder to the ground where she collapses like an unstrung marionette, then lifts her high by her ankles. B1 sets one of his big porridge pots beneath her dangling head. Too long! . . . too long! . . . too long! they chant, led by B3. B2 steps forward with a pair of scissors. Snip! snip! snip! The locks are gone, become a potful of golden threads for B2’s art, the intruder’s head now as hairless as the rest of her. Just right! Just right! Just right!

  Twenty-fifth variation

  G, sheared, listens to the mocking barks of the wild things as they carry her into the cottage, wondering if it always ended this way. Maybe there never was an open window, but no one wanted to say so. A kind of gentle lie meant to ease fears of the inevitable. If so, she is learning about it rather late, though maybe that is always true: A long sleep, then—briefly, too late—a rude awakening. They lay her on the kitchen table, which has been set, she sees, for three. Above her, bats flutter in the rafters. It is warm. The oven must be on. She recalls the porridge, chairs, beds, and feels a wistful nostalgia for those comforting lies, but anger, too, that she had been so misled, haunted lifelong by corrupted tales told by tellers long dead. There was also of course her dangerous desire to dance with the wild things, maybe even, in some manner, to be one, which desire she thought of as entirely her own. But was that desire also a haunting of sorts? Is anything truly her own except the fate that now awaits her?

  The pale intruder lies limply on their kitchen table like a plucked chicken, her clipped head now the whitest part of her. They have suffered such annoyances for as long as B2 can remember, and although the others are sorry this day’s games are over, she is not. The foxes and crones of olden times were bad enough, but these naughty towheads have made criminal behavior frivolous, even permissible, at the expense of her family’s privacy and reputation. The big bad Bs. Well, watch out, they shall be so. B1, whose cheerful mood is giving way to melancholy, his roars of laughter increasingly hollow, is less inclined to dismiss the restless golden-haired girls as mere nuisances. Admittedly, he has enjoyed their visits in ways the others have not, but they bring, if nothing else, consoling illusions, pretty markers to decorate the passing days, otherwise leaden and meaningless. His leadership usurped, he watches B3 bound about the kitchen, full of himself, devoted, not to harmony, but to its disruption. Perhaps, B1 thinks, he shall yet find an open window, disrupt the disruption. B3, grinning toothily, dips a basting brush in the honey glaze.

  They are painting something sticky on her as though to mask her nakedness. Or put a gloss on it. Those brightly colored porridge pots they smashed were beautiful, as once was she. But broken shards are beautiful too, and they can hurt. Perhaps they have done her a favor. Her golden locks defined her; now she is free to seek new definitions. Maybe she can even, with what time remains, realize her old desire. She sits up on the table, crosses her legs under her, peers into their beady eyes. The wild things. They seem to be laughing at her. They shouldn’t do that. She springs into a crouch, snatches up a scalpel and a carving knife, bares her teeth and snarls. Ruff! huff! huff! they bark, bumping their paws together. They think she is entertaining them. She uses her hind paws, as she thinks of them, to kick the dishes off the table, sends the pot of sticky stuff flying, and with an audacious swing of the scalpel knocks the saucepan off the stove. Their laughter ends. The littlest one, growling menacingly, reaches for her with his paw; she stabs it.

  Twenty-sixth variation

  Q.Ecstatic moment. G has become a wild thing. Why? The mere desire to be weird?

  A.It was weird to come here, but she has no choice now, nothing to lose.

  Q.B3, bleeding, roars in pain and fury. The bald intruder smirks. Will no one retaliate?

  A.B2 retaliates, leaps upon the table, lashes out at the intruder, who dances away, laughing.

  Q.G is such a scrawny sprite. What chance has she against three big wild things?

  A.She supposes, though she is nimble, none at all. Unless she finds an open window.

  Q.G clings thus to the myth of the open window. Can anyone save her now?

  A.B1, reality inventor, can, but at the cost of losing forever his traditional family role.

  Q.B3, loathing tradition, has disrupted the family patterns, seeking fundamental change. What is his desire?

  A.Freedom. Power. But someone must lose theirs if he gains his. Way of the wild.

  Q.B2 meanwhile, swinging wildly, takes a tumble, landing below in shattered dinnerware. Who avenges her?

  A.B1, stifling his laughter, should, but hesitates. He has lost his appetite for roast intruder.

  Q.With his newfound ambivalence, has B1 also lost his credibility as the wild things’ leader?

  A.In the eyes of B2 and B3, he has, but G still fears him most.

  Q.The wild things are in disarray, their feast disrupted, the feisty intruder trapped. What next?

  A.Perhaps G is eaten. Perhaps B1 invents an open window. Only inexorable time will tell.

  Twenty-seventh variation

  Something is ending. The ecstatic moment has passed. The biggest wild thing has absented himself. The other two, growling menacingly, approach the table whereon she crouches. Someone has been tasting my porridge, declares the middle one solemnly, and the other, following some beats behind, repeats the line in an icy monotone, holding up his bandaged paw in remonstrance. G, no longer restless,
can only wait for them amid the tabletop ruins of the disrupted feast, scalpel and carving knife in her fists. Someone has been sitting . . . . . . been sitting in my chair! They crawl upon the table, their huge claws unsheathed. Someone has been lying— She bangs her weapons down, interrupting their canonic litany, scoops her clipped hairs out of the porridge pot, and applies them to her sticky body, transforming herself into a golden wild thing. They snarl, back off. She grabs up more golden hairs and flings them at them. They duck and fall from the table, landing heavily, but soon climb up again, grinning their chilling grins. A faint breeze tells her that, somewhere, there is now an open window, but she also knows, alas, she could never reach it.

  Twenty-eighth variation

  B1 is lying in his bed upstairs, musing wistfully upon the world’s restless golden-haired girls, assuagers of time’s betrayals, key to their happiness, and musing most immediately upon the feisty but doomed intruder, misled by hope, in the kitchen below. He has opened a window for her, but surely too late. There will be other wildflower pickers and butterfly chasers, but he is saddened to lose this one: his virtuosic marionette, his mischievous little vixen. He rises, heavy of heart, and descends the stairs. She is trapped on one corner of the table, B3 closing in, B2 posted on the floor below, blocking her escape. The intruder’s audacious transformation makes him smile. From the rear she is still a pale inconsequential hairless thing, but her fuzzy chest and belly are resplendently golden. Her unnatural desire to transcend her kind has provoked, however, not a familial embrace, but murderous rage. She moves nimbly but not nimbly enough: B3 has her in his claws. B1 hoists himself upon the table, delivers a blow that sends B3 flying. Somebody has been tasting my porridge, he bellows thunderously. No reply, except for a low fierce growl.

  Twenty-ninth variation

  The big wild thing’s roar is met with rebellious rumbles. The others, grinning humorlessly, push him off the table: he hits the floor with a heavy grunt. G braces for the worst.

  B2 and B3, wielding forks, stalk the intruder. She has torn B2’s family apart and must be punished. B1 returns, sweeps them both off the table. Mad clatter of pans and dishes.

  G, weaponless, discovers the scissors used to shear her head. She crouches, gripping them fiercely, ready to strike, thinking of herself as a golden wild thing to keep her sinking spirits up.

  B3 is back, teeth clenched, growling savagely. He claws at the armed intruder, who, ducking, falls into the waiting arms of B2. B1 snatches her away before a bite can be taken.

  The puppeteer’s tabletop stage is now the platform for a nightmarish dance of punching, kicking, clawing wild things, G caught in the middle. This is fun! she tells her disbelieving self, weeping.

  B1, astraddle the frightened intruder, beats off her attackers. B3, standing heroically against the tyrant, takes blow after blow. B2 brains B1 with a skillet. Agitated bats flutter through the kitchen, screaming.

  G’s scissors have been batted away. She grabs up a wooden porridge spoon, swings it wildly, misses her attackers, hits the big one instead, surprising an angry roar from him. Oh oh.

  A window is open. The oven is lit. The intruder may flee or be their dinner. Or perhaps (three) they will simply, fighting over her, tear her apart. Way of the wild.

  Thirtieth variation: Quodlibet

  After dinner, the B family takes nostalgic delight in singing some of the old songs—sad songs, inspiring songs, indecently comic ones—about life’s ecstasies and time’s betrayals, about unavoidable endings, unchanging change, and the tender agitation of desire, about skinning vixens for their fur and impaling old crones on church steeples and about shearing towheaded sprites of their golden locks. They clack wooden spoons and dance ponderously yet exuberantly, belching and snorting, around the table. It is hot in the kitchen, but somewhere a window is open and a breeze is blowing. B2 is wearing a raggedy restitched pinafore on her head like a nightcap, making everybody laugh, and B3 makes rude noises with his toy trumpet. They sing about luring intruders into their cottage—“Come closer, come closer,” they growl seductively and laugh—while at the same time feeling a certain wistful nostalgia for the stories as they used to be told, the lies that made life easier.

  Aria da capo

  G enters the unoccupied cottage. Porridge, chairs, beds. Too hot, too cold, too high, too wide, too hard, too soft. Just right. G eats, breaks, crawls in. The owners return. An intruder!

  G, wildflower picker, enters the snug little cottage in the woods, knowing or not knowing whose it is, the owners absent as if by arrangement. Three bowls of porridge, three chairs, three beds. Too hot, too cold, too high, too wide, too hard, too soft. Just right. The rule of three. G eats, breaks, crawls in. The owners return. There has been an intruder!

  G, restless by nature, is picking wildflowers and chasing butterflies in the woods when, in a particularly lonely spot, she comes upon a snug little cottage. She may or may not know whose it is (there are stories). She peeps through the keyhole. The owners seem conveniently to be away, so she enters. There are three pots of porridge on the table, set out to cool. She tastes them: too hot, too cold, just right (she eats it up). There are three chairs. She sits on them: too high, too wide, just right (she breaks it). She is sleepy. Upstairs, there are three beds. She tries them: too hard, too soft, just right (she crawls in). The owners return. There has been an intruder! They have expected this.

  G, restless butterfly chaser, enters the little cottage in the woods, probably knowing whose it is (there are stories), the owners absent as if by arrangement. Bowls of porridge, chairs, beds. Too hot, too cold, too high, too wide, too hard, too soft. Just right. The rule of three. G eats, breaks, crawls in. The owners return. The intruder they have anticipated has arrived.

  G enters the unoccupied cottage. Porridge, chairs, beds. Too hot, cold, high, wide, hard, soft. Just right. G eats, breaks, crawls in. The owners return. An intruder. But where is she now?

  INVASION OF THE MARTIANS

  (2016)

  The handsome Senator from Texas, the Capitol’s leading heartthrob, a former astronaut, and a likely future President, was in bed with two ladies, a young intern and the more mature Secretary of the Interior (the Senator called her the Secretary of the Posterior, about which he had just made several charming off-color but complimentary remarks about hers, bringing an embarrassed flush to all four of her cheeks, and giggles from the intern who was playing with two of them), when his private security phone chimed with the news: “The Martians have landed! In Texas!” He kissed the ladies, donned his space suit and helmet, and sprang into action.

  The Senator flew his private jet directly from his ranch to the Martians’ landing site, not at all surprised that they had chosen the great state of Texas for this historic occasion. There, in an internationally televised address, he welcomed them to the once-sovereign Republic of Texas, the last best place on earth, and the heartland of the American nation, to which it also presently owed allegiance. The Martians poured out of their pear-shaped spaceship like spilled soup. They were pea-green, as anticipated, but with fluid bodies and multiple limbs that appeared and disappeared in the sticky flow. A random scattering of startled eyes blinked like tree lights. It wasn’t easy to see what separated one Martian from another.

  Texans, the Senator declared, are a warm and friendly people, always ready to provide true Southern hospitality, with a Texas twist, to all self-supporting and well-behaved guests—and all the more so to distinguished visitors from outer space. He invited the Martians to a barbecue with live country music at his ranch, and offered stables full of horses and motorcycles for their enjoyment. Together, he said, we can knock out some trade agreements and cultural exchanges of benefit to both our planets, and have a grand old time while we’re at it. We’ll go see a rodeo, a Longhorns football game, maybe take in some clay shoots, an old-fashioned chili cook-off, and some stock-car races. Yo! Hot damn! Whaddaya say, fellas? Being fluently bilingual, he told them all this in both American and Tex-Mex,
but, as it turned out, they didn’t speak any civilized languages, and instead pointed their weapons at him. Couldn’t they have taken a few elementary lessons before dropping in on strangers? They also seemed to have arrived without passports. He explained to them, politely, that there were certain obligatory regulations, and they shot him.

  He staggered back in surprise, though in fact he felt nothing. It was like being shot with a whooshing flashlight. As soon as they had raised their soft lumpy weapons, his security people had opened fire on them with their assault rifles and submachine guns, but the bullets passed right through them. The Martians made frantic squeaky noises, their unpaired eyes wheeling about in the green muck, and whooshed him again, and the Senator’s people, by now a bit panicky, shot futilely back. The Martians withdrew in a roiling green turbulence into their spaceship, one of them dropping the weapon that he—if they were divided into hes and shes—was carrying. The weapon looked like a potato with leafy ears, but it was as heavy as an armored tank. A size-XL, born-in-Texas backhoe was urgently helicoptered to the site, watched now by all the world’s news media, and the potato was lifted and trucked away for scientific analysis.

  The Senator, though shot, carried on gamely in his heroic West Texas manner. Reporters pressed round, shoving cameras and microphones in his face. What did it feel like, Senator? they wanted to know. Did it hurt? He smiled enigmatically. What do we do now, Senator? Does this mean interplanetary war?

  First, we have to wait for the lab reports on the captured weapon, he said, solemnly removing his space helmet. Our guests seem to have a different molecular structure, and as they may be only the first of many, we need to know more about them. The security of our planet depends upon it!