Skinny Legs and All

by Tom Robbins

  Should she resume her identity as an artist? Could a person choose to be or not to be an artist? Once certain childhood forces were set in motion, you either were an artist or you weren’t, and if you were, you might choose not to exhibit, you might even choose not to produce; you might, in other words, reject an art career, an art life, but you were still an artist. Right? Or was that just semantics? According to egalitarians, everybody had artistic talent. On a hobby level, that was possibly true. So what? It struck her that while a great many people wanted to want to be artists, they didn’t actually want to be. A girlfriend in Seattle once said to her, “I’d give everything if I could paint like you,” and Ellen Cherry had replied, with only a trace of pomposity, “I did give everything.”

  Talent was merely the underpinnings. To be an artist, you also had to have nerve. And to maintain nerve, you had to have drive. Apparently, she had lost her drive. Yet if she’d truly lost it, why was she fretting this way? Furthermore, if it was impossible to shed her art skin, no matter how she might twist or squirm, wouldn’t it be only sensible to take financial advantage of her lot, to relax and enjoy some modest success? Or was it the “modest” part (in light of Boomer’s triumph) that galled her?

  On and on she would stew, until, in desperation, she’d reach for her vibrator so that she might distract herself.

  To a lesser extent, she stewed over Buddy Winkler. Shortly after the holidays, she had taken Roland Abu Hadee aside and asked him what would happen should zealots attack and destroy the Dome of the Rock.

  “War,” replied Abu, matter-of-factly. “War would happen.”

  “You mean the Muslims would retaliate against synagogues and stuff?”

  “No,” said Abu. “I mean war. Syria, Libya, Iran, Lebanon, probably Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, perhaps nations as far away as Pakistan and Indonesia would declare war, jihad, holy war, against Israel. That is how strongly Muslims feel about the Dome of the Rock. They are prepared one and all to die for this. The Israelis would be so outnumbered that they would be forced to resort to nuclear weapons. In which case, the Soviet Union would probably be obliged to supply Islam with nuclear warheads. And that most certainly would draw America into it. Oh, yes, were the mosques on the Temple Mount destroyed, there would be a great thunderclap. Both polar caps would rattle like saucers, babies would be born smelling of sulfur. The terror within would then be without. The egg of fire would finally hatch. Armageddon. World War Three, if you prefer.”

  As soon as Abu left the kitchen, Ellen Cherry went directly to the wall phone and dialed Buddy. Normally, she might not have had the stomach, but she was disturbed, and it didn’t matter to her that it was after midnight.

  “Ummm.”

  “Hello. Uncle Buddy?”

  “Doll baby. I was jes’ dreamin’ ’bout you. Or some little play-pretty equally as sweet.”

  “Listen up, Uncle Bud. Do you know what’d happen if the Dome of the Rock was destroyed?”

  Buddy Winkler knew, all right. He might be in pajamas, a nightmask of ointment on his boils, an anchovy paste of sleep in his eyes, but he knew. “It’d precipitate the ultimate struggle between good and evil that’s prophesied to precede the Second Coming and the redemption of man. Hallelujah. Amen. What time is it, anyways?”

  “It could start World War Three.”

  “Dang tootin’ it could. That’s the whole point of it.”

  “You mean to tell me you’re willing to gamble with the lives of innocent people, billions of innocent people, risk the lives of everybody on earth, animals, trees, little children, have them roast in fire storms, have them covered with sores and burns, dying of radiation sickness, all that horrible, horrible pain and suffering—”

  “Hold on. You jes’ hold on now, little miss bleedin’ heart. It ain’t a gamble. The word of God is not no lottery ticket. It shall come to pass. Shall! His admonitions are as plain as the nose on your painted face. And sure it’s gonna be horrible. The Lord God designed it to be horrible. But the righteous’ll come out of it jes’ fine, thank you. Jesus’ll gather unto him the faithful to his breast, and they’ll enjoy sweet everlastin’ life. Them burns will heal, and them sores will vanish away. As for your careless and wicked, they’ll jes’ be gittin’ what’s due to ’em. They’ve had their fair chance, they’ll burn by their own iniquity. So let the war trumpets sound. Let the missiles rain. It’s God’s will, and he’ll decide who’s innocent and who ain’t, not you or the ACLU.”

  Ellen Cherry was incredulous. “You’re so damn sure of yourself that you’re willing to take a chance on starting World War Three. You’ll put that weight on your shoulders?”

  “You got a hearing problem? I already explained to you that—Never mind. Your heart is hardened. I don’t know where you’re at at this ungodly hour, but I beseech you to get yourself home and read your Scriptures and kneel beside the bed outta which you’ve driven your lawful husband, and pray. ’Repent ye therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come, from the presence of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus.’ Acts, three, nineteen.”

  “’The time of refreshing’ they call it?”

  “Yes, indeedy. Refreshing as a Co’-Cola.”

  “I have a good mind to tell the cops what you’re up to.”

  Buddy chuckled. “What cops? The po-lice here got no authority over it, and the po-lice in Israel are, most of ’em, on my side. Your righteous Jew wants this as bad as your Christian. ’Course, after the Second Coming, them Jews that are worthy will be forcibly converted. We’ll all of us be Christians in the New Jerusalem.”

  “How about the Muslims? Or the Buddhists and Hindus?”

  “Fried meat.”

  Ellen Cherry slammed down the receiver. She stewed about Buddy throughout the night and for many nights thereafter, when she wasn’t stewing about artisthood. What with Buddy’s shenanigans, what with the I & I’s raison d’être, what with Boomer’s dallying over there doing who knew what, it was getting harder and harder to carpet-tack the Middle East to the living room floor of her mind.

  In all the years that Ellen Cherry had known Buddy Winkler, she had never heard him utter a sentence that didn’t amount to a cliché. She concluded that that was what organized religion did to people. It limited them to thinking secondhand thoughts. It caused them to live secondhand lives. Wasn’t that what religion had in common with totalitarian politics? Nazi Germany, the Inquisition, Stalinism, the Crusades, these were what happened when reality was allowed to give way to cliché.

  Behind the sixth veil, like a pearl behind cheesecloth, was the realization that “the end of the world” was the most dangerous cliché of all. Incapable of penetrating the veil, unaware of the veil’s existence, Ellen Cherry could only stew—and wonder why Buddy had such a hankering for apocalypse.

  1. Because it would mean that his side had finally won?

  2. Because the messy, unpredictable imperfection of life/life would solidify once and for all into the perfectly ordered, totally controlled, solid-gold monolith of death/life?

  3. Because he was lonely?

  If Bud was prepared to act out some reckless biblical fantasy in order to alleviate an unbearable dissatisfaction and loneliness, then there was something that she could do about it. No, no, not even were it that simple, not even were she as versed in dissatisfaction and loneliness as she believed, could she spread herself out on an altar such as that. Impossible. Ridiculous.

  The next morning, as soon as she had replaced the vibrator in her underwear drawer, the panties ceased their girlish gossiping and began to chirp, “Who? Who? Who?” Who had it been this time? Whose name had she called aloud when she straddled the white pony of orgasm? Norman? Raoul? Was it Boomer again? “Who, Daruma, tell us who?”

  The vibrator would reveal nothing until the panties settled down. He lay there beside a mortified Spoon, chanting Japanese syllables over and over in a low, deep monotone: "Wooga go nami ne, Wooga go nami ne
.” When at last the drawer was still, he said, “A single cloud floating in midday sky contain no duck sauce.” He waited to see if the panties would protest, and when they did not, he said, “Good. Name my mistress call aloud was . . .”

  Spoon hummed a tune to herself, hoping to drown out the name, but despite her efforts, she heard it anyway.

  “Buddy,” said the vibrator. “She call out ’Uncca Bud.’”

  Spoon, too, spent much of her time in a stew. A metaphoric stew. She hadn’t been eaten with in so long it made her heartsick. Whatever else happened when they reached Jerusalem, she would be eaten with there. Yes! She would see to it. Upon entering the Third Temple, Spoon would go directly to the cafeteria. Interject herself between a priest and his pudding. Now that she was shiny and silvery again, perhaps the Messiah himself. . . . She could not entertain the sacrilege of crossing the Messiah’s lips, but she could imagine being cradled in his big healing hand of hide and satin. The Messiah was feeding fish soup to the blind. Ice cream to starving orphans. The Messiah used her to draw a magic circle in the honey pot. “There,” he told his apostles. “That will keep the flies away.”

  The dreaming was pleasant, but the stewing was not. Objects don’t swim in history the way humanity does. Even those rare objects who’ve recaptured the power of locomotion possess an innate patience to which no human saint could reasonably aspire. Nevertheless, Spoon fretted for reunion. She was anxious to tell her traveling companions about the Dome of the Rock, about Mr. Petway being in Jerusalem, about, most especially, the paintings of Miss Charles. The fact that Miss Charles had painted dozens of portraits of them—of them: Dirty Sock, Can o’ Beans, and Spoon—could only mean that she was their God-given champion.

  And yet, Spoon stewed, if she cherishes me so much, why has she sentenced me to the perpetual company of shallow, chatty undergarments and her Oriental instrument of debauchery? Can o’ Beans had advised her that one could learn from foreigners, but when it came to Phoenician sticks and Japanese dildos, one hardly could make a drop of sense of anything they said. If anything, the vibrator was more obscurant than Painted Stick.

  “Where do you come from, sir?” Spoon had asked when they met.

  “Same place guano came from that unseen bird drop into misty sea.”

  “That’s nice,” said Spoon, trying to be polite. She wasn’t yet aware of the fellow’s obscene function, believing him to be a curling iron.

  “Three pound of flax,” said the vibrator.

  The underpants didn’t understand him, either, but they acted as if he were as wise as Solomon. (Had Solomon actually been wise, that is.) They bowed to him and called him “Master” or “Daruma,” and, as difficult as it was for them to smother their giggles, they chanted with him for two hours every day. "Wooga go nami ne, Wooga go nami ne.”

  “This would give me a headache,” complained Spoon. “If I had a head.”

  “Ah! Headless headache!” the vibrator exclaimed, delighted. “Good. There hope for you, yet.”

  Left to their own devices, the panties would spend their time jabbering about fashion, fad diets, celebrity life-styles, and popular music. Even when they were meditating under Daruma’s supervision, Spoon could sometimes hear them whispering about the weight this actress had lost or that one gained. They also loved to engage in relentless and often highly speculative gossip about Ellen Cherry Charles. They maintained a near obsession with Miss Charles’s sex life, which Spoon attributed to the fact that they, singularly and in rotation, were usually in close proximity to the, uh, hub of that presumed activity.

  As a defense against their vulgar and embarrassing chitchat, Spoon began to relate her adventures to them: where she’d been and where she was going, under what circumstances and in whose company. Easily entertained, the underpants listened attentively. They appreciated a good story. Not for a millisecond, however, did they believe that she had attained a state of locomotion. To them, it was just a tall tale. Insulted that the panties would question her veracity, Spoon executed a couple of feeble cartwheels and a clumsy pirouette. Don’t think that that didn’t snap their elastic! From then on, they were twice as attentive. Under his reserved exterior, even Daruma was impressed.

  Considering that she could locomote, the panties couldn’t understand why Spoon lay around stewing in a dresser drawer. Why didn’t she light out for St. Patrick’s and rejoin her interesting friends?

  “First of all, I don’t know the way,” said Spoon.

  “Way that is true Way cannot be known,” countered the vibrator.

  “Secondly, the very idea of it gives me a fright.”

  “Those who would travel must learn to like dust,” said Daruma.

  “Most important, though, is that we inanimate objects have an ethical responsibility not to shatter the prevailing reality of human beings. Conch Shell was adamant about that. If a man saw me locomoting, why he’d think he’d gone insane or else witnessed a miracle. Can o’ Beans says that people are too fragile for miracles.”

  “Honto des’,” the vibrator said, sagely. “Is true. Two thousand year ago, virgin give birth. People still not get over it. Ha-ha-ha.”

  “I’ve never considered the Immaculate Conception in those terms,” said Spoon, “and I fail to find humor in it. But I suppose you could be right. Maybe that’s why God had to suspend the miraculous.”

  Content to listen to Spoon’s stories, the panties seldom asked questions. In his own cool way, however, Daruma exhibited an abiding curiosity. “The more talking and thinking, the farther from the truth,” he was fond of saying, yet he queried Spoon persistently about such matters as how the decorated stick and the seashell managed to get from Jerusalem to a cave in Utah (or was it Wyoming?). There had been a time when Spoon had puzzled over that, as well. Now, though, she had the answer at hand.

  “The Phoenicians took them. You probably think Columbus discovered America. No, he didn’t. He was a good, brave Catholic, and I’d like to believe he was first, but he wasn’t. The Phoenicians had wonderful sailing ships, and they sailed all over the world. Well, probably not the Pacific, but the other oceans. They knew about America many centuries before Columbus. Many, many centuries. Isn’t that amazing? After the Romans destroyed Herod’s Temple in—” Spoon had to stop and visualize numerals. She could see a seven, standing tall with its right arm outstretched, like a safety patrol boy at a school crossing, but she couldn’t conjure up a clear picture of the number to its left. Somehow five didn’t look right, rocking on its brontosaurus tail, nor did the hydrocephalic nine.

  “Seventy something. A.D. You know what A.D. means?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said a pair of cotton briefs. “That’s like the current that makes Master vibrate when he’s like operating on batteries.”

  “All vibrators operate on batteries,” corrected a slightly older pair, bleached as blue as moonlight on snow. “You think a lady would wanna like fuck herself with something plugged into the wall?”

  A tittering circulated in the drawer like birdsong in a box hedge. Spoon palpitated, coughed, and elected to press on. “After Jerusalem was destroyed again in seventy something, Painted Stick and Conch Shell ended up back with the Phoenicians. There were powerful priestesses who supposedly could read the future. Phoenicia was by then part of the Roman Empire, the Roman province of Syria. It continued to prosper economically, but the priestesses convinced a lot of people that their culture and religion were doomed. Which proved to be the case. Thanks to them, they began to take measures to try to insure survival, or, rather, reemergence at a later date.”

  “When people say ’take measures,’ I always think like, you know, see how tall or wide something is,” said a sweet, young voice from the undie pile. “Forty inches. Fifty inches.”

  “Like you mean Liz Taylor’s hips?”

  Again the drawer filled up with titters. Spoon turned to the vibrator, who sympathized but offered little help. “Greedy for bait, fish soon caught. You have only to open mouth, your life los
t.”

  Spoon decided to cut it short. “A priestess carried Conch Shell and Painted Stick aboard a big ship, and they crossed the Atlantic and sailed as far as they could up the St. Lawrence river system. Then a party carried them overland for a long ways until the priestess found just the right hiding place. It was a small cave. The cave had a niche in it, and the priestess hid our shell and stick in the niche, but first she rubbed them in a particular way that put them into a trance. They were programmed not to wake up until they felt a certain familiar energy. That would be the signal that the era of Rome was finished and the earth was returning to its senses. I realize that it sounds ever so frightfully pagan, but that’s the way it was explained to me.”

  “Ah, so,” said Daruma the O-maker.

  MONTHS EARLIER, even before Boomer got his lame foot stuck in one of the seven mystical doors of Jerusalem, Ellen Cherry had transferred her wedding band from her left hand to her right, a sign that she was widowed or divorced, although neither was technically the case. Every time that the underwear drawer opened, a burst of light, solar or incandescent, would rush in, followed fairly quickly by a muscular, machine-tooled load of hydrocarbon-laden New York air, and then by Ellen Cherry’s right hand, readily identifiable by its Jezebel-colored nails (long and sharp as the wrought-iron spikes around an embassy) and its simple ring of gold.

  Each and every time the hand entered drawer space, Spoon hoped with all her might that it was reaching for her. Alas, were it morning, the hand selected the pantie of the day (Ellen Cherry owned few brassieres, as her lumps lacked sufficient mass to fully occupy a harness); were it night, the hand, always a bit hesitantly, withdrew Daruma. Alas.

  One afternoon toward late February, when she had stayed home from work with a beefy cold, Ellen Cherry did remove Spoon from the drawer. What a hopeful moment for the stranded utensil! In the end, however, it was Ellen Cherry who benefited from the encounter.