Still Life with Woodpecker

by Tom Robbins

  Montana Judy grew sick of being a guinea pig for Bernard’s experiments. And she was unrelieved when he expanded his testing to include her younger sisters, the twins: Montana Molly and Montana Polly. Bernard, you see, personally supplied and delivered the squirmy sauce that was the activating agent in the tests. Montana Judy decided that Bernard should pay his debt to society in a more conventional fashion. Montana Judy turned him in.

  That book that judges are said to throw at offenders (the rule book, presumably; a Russian novel, possibly; no elegant volume of verse, certainly) was hurled like a bean ball at the red bean of Bernard Mickey Wrangle. He was sentenced to thirty years. The last quarter of the twentieth century might be destined to limp into history, but at least there’d be no Woodpecker around to drill holes in its crutches.

  Aware of his reputation for exits, the federal penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington, locked him up quite tight. It took him more than a year to blow out.

  In his absence, the world had changed. It was only fair. Bernard himself had changed. For example, observation of his colleagues in prison had convinced him that thievery, inspired by the basest human impulses, was unbecoming to an outlaw. Let businessmen and riffraff rob and cheat. He vowed never to steal again, unless it was necessary. He also vowed to behave more sensitively toward women, beginning with Montana Judy, could he find her. He couldn’t. She had joined a gang of equality-minded women that spent its evenings terrorizing men, equally, regardless of their degrees of guilt or innocence. These women would accept men only as subservient flunkies, and while Bernard knew only too well that that was how many men had treated many women for many centuries, he couldn’t see a mere reversal of rotten roles as being very equalizing or very helpful to anyone. Moreover, he was nobody’s flunky. Not even the moon’s. Montana Polly had joined the same mob of avengers. Montana Molly was enrolled in Spokane Success, a secretarial college. The Woodpecker Gang had disbanded. Four former members were in jail. One had been clubbed to death with folding chairs by members of an American Legion post in Jackson Hole. Three had embraced conventional politics and were working within the system to alter the system. One was selling real estate and had contracted Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Willie the Wetback was studying pre-law at Stanford. He was in a fraternity. Starving his nose, although he still smoked grass occasionally. He wanted to work for Nader one day. The world had changed.

  Bernard was perplexed. He missed the thrills, chills, and spills. Just because the war was over did that mean everybody had to stop having fun?

  Thanks to Montana Judy, the hideout behind the waterfall was hot. Bernard went underground in Seattle. He got a job mixing drinks in a bar frequented by off-duty policemen. Some nights there were dozens of cops in the place. Their presence sprinkled a little spice on his life. Added a tiny tickle of amusement. He poured cheap bourbon. And bided his time.

  A writer published an open letter to Bernard in a leading liberal periodical. He requested an interview. Utmost secrecy was sworn. It was on the level. The writer was a man of proven courage and integrity. The writer wanted amnesty for dissidents such as Bernard. He said that Bernard had suffered enough. He wrote that living underground was no less punishing than prison. “A person underground exists in a state of controlled schizophrenia,” he wrote. “Terror never slackens.” The journalist considered Bernard a victim of the Vietnam War. The fact that he had acted against the government’s interests instead of in them was immaterial, the writer said. The socio-political realities that drove Bernard to risk his life bombing induction centers were essentially the same as those that led other young men to risk theirs trading shots in rice paddies. As a fugitive, on the run, living in disguise and fear, Bernard was no less a casualty than those poor veterans who had left prime cuts from their physiques to decay in Da Nang and Hue.

  Ha ha.

  That’s how Bernard’s infamous response began.

  “Ha ha.

  “Victim? The difference between a criminal and an outlaw is that while criminals frequently are victims, outlaws never are. Indeed, the first step toward becoming a true outlaw is the refusal to be victimized.

  “All people who live subject to other people’s laws are victims. People who break laws out of greed, frustration, or vengeance are victims. People who overturn laws in order to replace them with their own laws are victims. (I am speaking here of revolutionaries.) We outlaws, however, live beyond the law. We don’t merely live beyond the letter of the law—many businessmen, most politicians, and all cops do that—we live beyond the spirit of the law. In a sense, then, we live beyond society. Have we a common goal, that goal is to turn the tables on the nature of society. When we succeed, we raise the exhilaration content of the universe. We even raise it a little bit when we fail.

  “Victim? I deplored the ugliness of the Vietnam War. But what I deplored, others have deplored before me. When war turns whole populations into sleepwalkers, outlaws don’t join forces with alarm clocks. Outlaws, like poets, rearrange the nightmare. It is elating work. The years of the war were the most glorious of my life. I wasn’t risking my skin to protest a war. I risked my skin for fun. For beauty!

  “I love the magic of TNT. How eloquently it speaks! Its resounding rumble, its clap, its quack is scarcely less deep than the passionate moan of the Earth herself. A well-timed series of detonations is like a choir of quakes. For all of its fluent resonance, a bomb says only one word—’Surprise!’—and then applauds itself. I love the hot hands of explosion. I love a breeze perfumed with the devil smell of powder (so close in its effect to the angel smell of sex). I love the way that architecture, under the impetus of dynamite, dissolves almost in slow motion, crumbling delicately, shedding bricks like feathers, corners melting, grim facades breaking into grins, supports shrugging and calling it a day, tons of totalitarian dreck washing away in the wake of a circular tsunami of air. I love that precious portion of a second when window glass becomes elastic and bulges out like bubble gum before popping. I love public buildings made public at last, doors flung open to the citizens, to the creatures, to the universe. Baby, come on in! And I love the final snuff of smoke.

  “Yes, and I love the trite mythos of the outlaw. I love the self-conscious romanticism of the outlaw. I love the black wardrobe of the outlaw. I love the fey smile of the outlaw. I love the tequila of the outlaw and the beans of the outlaw. I love the way respectable men sneer and say ‘outlaw.’ I love the way young women palpitate and say ‘outlaw.’ The outlaw boat sails against the flow, and I love it. Outlaws toilet where badgers toilet, and I love it. All outlaws are photogenic, and I love that. ‘When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free’: that’s a graffito seen in Anacortes, and I love that. There are outlaw maps that lead to outlaw treasures, and I love those maps especially. Unwilling to wait for mankind to improve, the outlaw lives as if that day were here, and I love that most of all.

  “Victim? Your letter reminded the Woodpecker that he is a Woodpecker blessed. Your sympathies for my loneliness, tension, and disturbing fluctuations in identity have some basis in fact and are humbly appreciated. But do not be misled. I am the happiest man in America. In my bartender’s pockets I still carry, out of habit, wooden matches. As long as there are matches, there will be fuses. As long as there are fuses, no walls are safe. As long as every wall is threatened, the world can happen. Outlaws are can openers in the supermarket of life.”

  28

  WAS THERE ACTUALLY an era so silly that its maidens would drop a handkerchief—a purely ornamental handkerchief, we may assume; silken, lace-trimmed, nowhere upon its perfumed surface the faintest fresco of snot—in order to make the acquaintance of the gentleman bound to retrieve it? Myth or no, it was with a studied carelessness akin to scented hankie bait that the phrase “in my bartender’s pockets” was dropped by Bernard upon the verbal promenade of his reply to the well-meaning journalist. Bernard was giving his pursuers a little hint. Just to make things more interesting.

  The
hint may have been taken, but it failed to lead the pack to his lair. Although there were several threatening moments, such as the night a drunk doused him with beer, causing his dye to run in the presence of twenty policemen, Bernard’s cover held. As years went by and match-sticks yellowed and splintered in his pockets, he was sustained in his inactivity by thoughts of what fun it would be when the statute of limitations expired and he could go flamboyantly public, rub their noses in it. There came an occasion, however, when he felt compelled to speak, or rather, to let dynamite speak for him. And now, after a slight misfire, he found himself, with but eleven months left on the fugitive calendar, arrested.

  Arrested by Her Royal Highness, Princess Leigh-Cheri Furstenberg-Barcalona, deposed cheerleader, environmentalist without portfolio, blue-eyed altruist, grapefruit-breasted celibate, would-be sovereign of Mu, the only woman the Woodpecker had ever met whose hair burned as brightly at his once had.

  He would not go quietly.

  29

  “SO IT’S YOU. I might have guessed it was you.”

  “I’m flattered that you remember me.”

  “The man who goes ‘yum’—”

  “Only at appropriate moments.”

  “—and blows up hotels and disrupts the most important meeting of minds since God knows when.”

  “This meeting is more important. This meeting between you and me. Let’s retire somewhere for a drink.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re under arrest. I’m taking you straight to the police.”

  “I must warn you: I won’t go quietly. Criminals, because they’re plagued with guilt, often will surrender and go quietly. Outlaws, because they’re pure, never will.”

  As in a symphony the brass may suddenly blare and drown out the woodwinds and strings, so fear suddenly blared in Leigh-Cheri, drowning out the anger and frustration that in the opening bars of this concerto of confrontation had served her so well. She glanced around the beach, looking for assistance. Some young men, blonde as shampoo commercials, brown-skinned as turds, noticed her looking and waved at her.

  “Don’t expect any help from those beach boys. They’re only interested in snatch and surf. Besides, they’d be no threat to me. I have a black belt in haiku. And a black vest in the cleaners. This morning I met a visitor from the planet Argon. She told me I have an aura like burnt rubber. Thanking her, I said black was my favorite color. Aside from red.”

  “So you met her, too.” Leigh-Cheri didn’t know what else to say. For the first time, she noticed that he was wearing black swim trunks. And on his feet black thongs. Where does one buy black thongs? She felt disoriented. Goose bumps popped up in her sunburn, making her hide resemble a bird’s-eye view of bloody cobblestones. She felt like a street in the French Revolution. She turned to the hag in the bikini. “Gulietta, get the police,” she ordered, knowing full well that the police were all in town trying to solve the case of the bombed hotel. Gulietta couldn’t understand her, anyway.

  “There’s nothing to worry about. I won’t hurt you. I’m delighted that we’re getting to be friends. I would have left Maui right after the boom-boom”—he grinned at Gulietta—“if it hadn’t been for you.”

  It was true. An old pal of his from the mainland, now a marijuana planter on the Kona coast, had agreed in advance to whisk Bernard to Honolulu aboard his smuggler’s sloop. Even though the bombing was premature, the sloop could have sailed Monday morning had Bernard desired.

  “I don’t get it. You stayed because of me?”

  “Because of you, babe. And because I have some blasting powder that I haven’t used yet.”

  “What?” She laughed in disbelief. “I can’t trust my ears. You—maniac!”

  “Mister maniac.”

  “You want to blow up something else?”

  “What I want is to buy you a drink.”

  “Buy me a drink?”

  “A piña tequila or a tequila tai. If you’re old enough, that is. We wouldn’t want to break the law.”

  “I’ll bet I’m as old as you are.”

  “I’m older than Sanskrit.”

  “Well, I was a waitress at the Last Supper.”

  “I’m so old I remember when McDonald’s had only sold a hundred burgers.”

  “You win.”

  “Then I can buy you a drink?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bernard.”

  “Bernard what?”

  “Bernard Maniac.”

  “Listen, Mr. Maniac—”

  “I’m listening to nothing unless I’m sitting across a table from you at the Lahaina Broiler. Your grandmother can come, too, although frankly I’m a bit shocked by the extent to which her bathing attire reveals her charms.”

  “Well,” she said. She paused. She thought it best to humor him. It’d be easier to raise help in town than out there on the beach. And she must admit that despite the dental neglect it disclosed, he had a wonderful smile. “Well, I do need to get out of the sun. Redheads burn easily.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  30

  ON THE MAINLAND, a rain was falling. The famous Seattle rain. The thin, gray rain that toadstools love. The persistent rain that knows every hidden entrance into collar and shopping bag. The quiet rain that can rust a tin roof without the tin roof making a sound in protest. The shamanic rain that feeds the imagination. The rain that seems actually a secret language, whispering, like the ecstasy of primitives, of the essence of things.

  The rain enveloped the house—the house that King Max had come to call Fort Blackberry—like a hair spray for jellyfish. Inside, the King and his Queen struggled with an electric dishwasher. They couldn’t get it to function. Neither a sherry glass nor a teaspoon had been cleaned in the three days of Gulietta’s absence. Chuck might have come to the rescue, but as misfortune would have it, Chuck had been called into Seattle on Monday evening and had not returned. An ill sister was the reason given, but surely it was quite another matter. There was unrest in the Furstenberg-Barcalona homeland. Revolution was in the air. Convinced that the royal family was involved, Washington wanted to tighten security. Particularly close tabs on King Max was what the CIA had in mind. The CIA primed Chuck with a small bonus. (He would lose every cent when Max drew an inside straight to his two pairs.)

  As they fiddled with the dishwasher, Max and Tilli plotted and schemed.

  “She’ll be twenty in April,” said Max. “A year after that, she can marry. I say the sooner we get a suitor in the lineup the better our odds.”

  “Ja,” said Tilli. “Ja, da, si. Ve know thees already a hundred times. But dat doesn’t mean ve got to rush her into some flake.”

  “Into what?”

  “A flake. A flaky guy. Like zee president’s son. He ees loco gringo.”

  “If you’re insinuating that that kid has got two strikes and no balls, you’re probably correct. My point is, we can’t sit around here waiting for eligible Europeans to come out picking blackberries. Now, Idaj Fizel’s middle boy owns part interest in an NBA club. He’s in Seattle every time his team plays the Sonics. I think I can arrange a meeting.”

  “Oui, but he ees not royalty.”

  “No, he’s richer and more powerful than that.”

  “Arab,” moaned Tilli. “Ein Arab. Oh-Oh, spaghetti-o.”

  The dishwasher remained inactive. It might as well have gone along to Maui. The frog could have turned it into a condominium. The royal couple huffed and puffed over it. Once it sounded as if it had begun to work, but it was merely Max’s valve that was clanging. When for the third or fourth time she accidentally banged her Chihuahua’s head against its lid, Tilli turned her majestic back on it.

  King Max gathered up the dirty dishes. He transported them into the backyard. “We’ll let the rain wash them,” he said. “It ought to be good for something.”

  Actually, the rain has many uses. It prevents the blood and the sea from becoming too salty. It administers knockout drops to unruly violets.
It manufactures the ladder that neon climbs to the moon. A seeker can go into the Great Northwest rain and bring back the Name he needs. And, indeed, the rain pried flecks of egg yolk and gravy from the crest, from the honor point, from the fess point, from the nombril of the Furstenberg-Barcalona heraldic dinner plates. When, however, Max returned the next morning to fetch the dishes, half of them were missing. The Queen put the blame on tramps or gypsies. Max knew that the blackberries had gotten them.

  As they dined on canned stroganoff from paper plates, Tilli said to Max, “I weesh Leigh-Cheri vas only here.”

  But the King said, “Maybe it’s best she’s away while we recruit a suitor. At any rate, we can rest assured she’s in good hands in Hawaii.”

  31

  “I’VE NEVER BEEN KISSED by a man in Donald Duck sunglasses before,” said Leigh-Cheri.

  “I apologize,” said Bernard. “I’m sorry about the Donald Duck sunglasses. They ought to be Woody Woodpecker sunglasses, but nobody makes Woody Woodpecker sunglasses.”

  The Princess didn’t know what he was talking about. She didn’t really care. She was on her third tequila mockingbird, he on his fourth. They were floating in that blissful phase that characterizes religious transcendence and the onset of alcohol poisoning. Gulietta had turned her back on them and was watching the sunset. Some chaperon.

  “Also, I don’t normally kiss men who smoke,” announced Leigh-Cheri. “Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.”

  “So I’ve heard. I’ve also heard that kissing a person who’s self-righteous and intolerant is like licking a mongoose’s ass.”

  “I’m not a mongoose’s ass!”

  “And I’m not an ashtray.” Removing the unopened pack of Camels from his shirt pocket, he tossed them over his shoulder. “I only smoke when I’m locked up. In jail, a cigarette can be a friend. Otherwise, my Camels are just a front. It’s an excuse for carrying matches.”