“I know he’s gone,” Wesley said.
“You were right, Little Bunny,” Don Rhotten said. “The bears got him!”
“What are we going to do?” Wesley asked.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do,” Don Rhotten said, with firmness in every syllable, “but I’m going to climb back up the tree.”
“I heard somewhere that bears climb trees,” Wesley said.
“I’ll take my chances,” Don Rhotten said, and with that he shinnied back up the tree.
Wesley found an adjacent tree and climbed up that one, too, where for fifteen minutes he clung on for dear life and wondered what he could do. The only consoling thought he could think of was that the bear (bears, there must be at least two, and probably three, since three people had been carried off) would probably prefer Don Rhotten who was fatter than he was and would be a more tempting morsel.
But then, ashamed of himself for not thinking of it before and congratulating himself on his foresight, he remembered the flares. The man at the Beverly Hills Safari Outfitters had told him that you never knew when you would need an emergency flare, and Wesley, impressed with the man’s concern for his safety, had bought a case of them.
He gathered his courage, slid down the tree, ran to the supply tent, opened the case, filled his pockets with flares, and ran back to the tree.
“You’re a brave man, Little Bunny,” Don Rhotten said. “I’ve always said that.”
“I know you have, Don,” Wesley said. He fired the first flare. He was a bit (actually, wholly) inexperienced with flares, and the first one he fired went down, not up, setting fire to his pup tent. He consoled himself with the thought that bears would stay away from the fire. Or was it that bears were attracted by fire?
He fired flares every three minutes. They were seen by the night crew at the potato chip factory, of course. But the night foreman decided it was just one more harassment from the clean water kooks, who refused to understand that crudding up one little stream was small enough price to pay for potato chips, particularly when the potato chips were just one more patriotic good work of a senator. He posted guards at the fence line and put in a call to the governor, telling him that the national guard might be needed to protect private property from conservation kooks. Then he called the senator and repeated, word for word, what the governor had said about the senator and his potato chips and what the governor had suggested the senator do with his potato chip factory. The senator cried.
Wesley St. James and Don Rhotten were in the trees, all told, for more than two hours. The supply of flares was exhausted. There was nothing to do but hang on to the trees and await whatever cruel destiny fate had written on their slates.
And then there came the sound of voices, raised in bawdy song, and of feet crashing through the woods. Both Don and Wesley wept tears of relief, but, purely as a precaution, remained in the trees until they saw below them a large state trooper and an equally large civilian (obviously another guide).
“All right,” the trooper shouted, “come down out of the trees, kids! The joke is over!”
Wesley St. James slid down the tree. Don Rhotten followed suit. They rushed over to Trooper Harris and Boris and kissed their hands.
“Thank God, we’re saved!”
“What are you,” Boris inquired, snatching his hand back, “some kind of queer religious nut?”
“Officer,” Wesley began. “Sergeant! Captain! Our guide and two ladies have been carried off by wild bears!”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Boris said.
“I’ll have a look around,” Harris said. He struck Wesley St. James that moment as a reincarnation of James Arness. Tall, large, in charge. “My friend here will stay here and protect you from the bears.”
“Oh, thank you!” Don Rhotten said.
“And don’t let them shoot off any more flares, Boris,” Harris said. He disappeared into the woods.
“Friend, who is that magnificent human being?” Wesley St. James asked.
“I didn’t know your kind came out in the woods,” Boris replied. “I thought you spent most of your time in closets.”
“I’ll have you know, sir,” Don Rhotten said, “that I am Don Rhotten, America’s most beloved young television journalist.”
“How do you do?” Boris said. “I’m Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the world’s greatest opera singer.”
“Wise guy!” Wesley St. James snapped.
“What do you mean by that?” Boris snarled.
“Nothing at all,” Wesley St. James said quickly. “Nothing at all. It’s just that you don’t expect to see the world’s greatest opera singer in the deep woods.”
“You don’t expect to see a bald-headed fairy climbing down out of a tree, kissing grown men’s hands and trying to tell people he’s been chased up there by a bear, either.”
“You were telling me about the state trooper,” Wesley St. James said.
“Steven Harris,” Boris said. “He’s my friend.”
“I think I’m going to make him a star!” Wesley St. James said.
“What have you guys been drinking?” Boris asked.
“I’m Wesley St. James,” Wesley announced. “Known as the Napoleon of Daytime Drama.”
“Soap operas, you mean?” Boris asked.
“We don’t use that word,” Wesley said.
“I don’t think Steve would be happy in the theater,” Boris said.
“The pay is good,” Wesley St. James said. “I can see it now: Wesley St. James presents a St. James Production. Steven Harris, Patience Throckbottom Worthington, and Daphne Covington in ‘Code of the Deep Woods.’ ”
“Gee,” Don Rhotten said. “That sounds great, Little Bunny!”
“The continuing story of how a courageous grandmother . . . that’ll fix that old bitch for holding up Wesley St. James . . . and her family, Sergeant Steven Nobleheart of the Maine Mounted Police, and Carol Nobleheart, his beloved if doomed sister . . . face the stark life with all its pathos, pain, and tragedy, in the deep woods.”
“Not a chance,” Boris replied. (He was, after all, not entirely inexperienced in dealing with theatrical producers. He had not become the world’s highest-paid opera singer because the producers had liked the sound of his voice, as he often said. It wasn’t that Boris disliked producers ... he felt, as a group, that they were every bit as nice as people who poison Halloween candy and just as valuable to society as congressmen . . . but rather that they tested his mettle. He had as much trouble dealing with producers as he did getting the corks out of champagne bottles: they always came out in the end, of course. The only thing that changed was the sound of the gas escaping.)
“What do you mean, ‘not a chance’?” Wesley St James asked. This was not the response he was used to getting when he announced that he was going to make someone a star.
“My client considers your opening offer, for someone of his talents and desirability in the marketplace, insulting. We’re just going to have to go to . . . what did you say your network was?”
“ABS,” Don Rhotten said.
“CBS,” Boris said. “Their offer was a lot better.”
“I didn’t make an offer,” Wesley St. James said.
“Well, there you are,” Boris said. “Now why don’t you fold up your tent, little man, so you can steal away when my client returns?’
“Five hundred dollars a week,” Wesley St. James said.
“Or maybe NBC,” Boris said, thoughtfully. “They know the value of talent when they see it.”
“Seven-fifty,” Wesley St. James said.
“Tell you what I’ll do, little man with funny hair,” Boris said. “To show you that my heart’s in the right place, we’ll split the difference. Call it a thousand a week and certain perks ... you know what perks are ... and you’ve got a deal.”
“What kind of perks?” Wesley St. James asked.
“I’ll send you a list,” Boris said. “Yes or no? I don’t have all night
to stand around in the middle of the woods arguing with you.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Wesley St. James said.
“Ordinarily,” Boris said, “I would shake hands. But under these circumstances, I think I’d rather not.”
“How soon can your client start to work?”
“Just as soon as your check for a month’s advance salary clears,” Boris said. “You understand, of course, that he is to be paid in advance?”
“I don’t have a checkbook.”
“Cash will do,” Boris said. “Say a thousand right now, for earnest money.”
As Wesley St. James searched for his wallet, found it, and started to unzip it, there came the sound of several animate objects marching through the woods.
“My God!” Don Rhotten said, heading back for his tree. “Just at the moment when Wesley St. James was to create another star, we’re all going to be eaten by bears.”
“Shut up, Don,” Wesley St. James said. The fear of bears was behind him. He had that feeling; he knew he was on the threshold of the greatest triumph of his daytime drama career.
It wasn’t a herd of bears. It was Trooper Steven Harris of the Maine state police. He held Miss LaVerne Schultz’s arm in his left hand, Miss Louella Frump’s arm in his right hand. Pierre LeGrande, a/k/a Angelo Napolitano, trudged along behind them, head bent, looking somewhat chagrined.
“I have good news,” Harris said. “Your friends have not been eaten by bears.”
“Say, Pierre,” Don Rhotten asked, “what happened to your pants?” He paused and then went on. “And for that matter, LaVerne, what happened to yours?”
“That’s the bad news,” Trooper Harris said. “I’m afraid I must tell you that Angelo has broken Rule Three of the code of the deep woods.”
“What’s that?”
“Guides are not supposed to fool around with guidees,” Harris said.
“I’ve got good news for you, too,” Boris said.
“What’s that?” Harris asked.
“You have just become a television star at one-thousand dollars a week,” Boris said. “Plus perks.”
“Not now, Boris,” Steven Harris said. “Be a good guy and cool the imagination until I get these four kooks out of the woods, will you?’
“Give him the long green, little man,” Boris ordered.
Wesley St. James walked up to Trooper Harris and handed him one-thousand dollars.
“What’s this for?”
“I just told you,” Boris said. “You have just become a star.”
The scene shifts, as they say in the trade, to glamorous Hollywood, California, specifically to the Wesley St. James Productions studios and to the interior of Miss Patience Throckbottom Worthington’s trailer.
Miss Worthington is dressed for her role as Sister Piety on the daytime drama “Guiding Torch.” Such is her inimitable talent for creating an image that she really looks like a nun, even though she is sitting, a foot-long cigarette holder in her mouth, a martini glass in her hand, and (her vestments hiked rather high) displaying a good deal of leg, on a barstool in her trailer.
Wesley St. James is dressed as he was dressed in the deep woods of Maine—that is to say, in a genuine safari jacket, an Australian bush hat, riding breeches, and glistening boots. He believes this gives him a certain aura of machismo.
Miss Worthington takes the cigarette holder from her mouth, looks at Wesley St. James with absolute loathing, and speaks.
“If you really think that Patience T. Worthington is going to go on bleeping location in the bleeping woods to play some bleeping backwoods earth mother, you’ve got another bleeping think coming, you bleeping little blap.”
“Miss Worthington,” Wesley St. James said, “you asked me to come up with a vehicle in which the many facets of your extraordinary talent could be fully utilized,” Wesley St. James said.
“Patience T. Worthington, playing with two bleeping unknowns? I don’t even know what these two blaps you’ve come up with bleeping well look like.”
“I have glossy photographs right here, Miss Worthington,” Wesley St. James said. He handed her two photographs. One was an 8 x 10 glossy photograph of Zelda Spinopolous, taken some years before when she was a student at Ingrid Posnofski’s Studio of the Dance in Cicero, Illinois. It showed her, her blond hair in pigtails, wearing a sailor suit, performing a tap dance.
“That’s Daphne Covington,” Wesley St. James said.
Miss Worthington studied the photograph carefully, both because she was on her fifth martini and things were a little blurry and because long experience had taught her to watch out for young broads who were liable to steal your scene. In her professional judgment, Daphne Covington couldn’t possibly pose such a threat.
“O.K.,” she said. “She looks like something that wouldn’t have the bleeping sense to get her tail out of the bleeping forest.”
The second photograph was a Polaroid color shot taken just two days before in the woods by Don Rhotten. (He had taken a Polaroid camera with him into the woods, although he hadn’t had photographs exactly like this in mind; he had really been thinking of taking some “nature” shots of the ladies, au naturel.)
This showed Trooper Steven J, Harris, Mr. Wesley St. James, and Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov. Trooper Harris was smiling nervously at the camera. Wesley St. James, who had drawn himself up to his full five-feet-four, was smiling at Trooper Harris. Boris was unaware he was in the picture at all. He was in the act of holding up the advance cash payment Mr. St. James had given to Trooper Harris to make sure the bills had been printed by the United States government.
“Well, there’s your star,” Wesley St. James said.
“Not bad,” Miss Worthington said.
“A true child of the woods,” Wesley St. James said. “All man and a yard wide.”
“So it would appear.”
“The kind of face that will really reach out and grab the hearts of women,” Wesley St. James said, “and let them simultaneously hate and love you as the source of his inspiration and strength.”
“You know,” Miss Worthington said, almost fondly, “you little blap, I have to hand it to you. You have finally come up with a man to play against me with whom, I sense in my bones, I will have a great rapport, a mingling of the souls. We will make great television, and some other things, together.”
“I thought you would approve.”
“I have only two questions, Wesley,” she said. “What’s he doing with the money, and who’s the ugly cop you’re looking at like a lovesick calf?”
Chapter Thirteen
Thirty-eight percent of the petroleum supplies of France, as has been previously stated, originate beneath the sands of the kingdom of Hussid. For that reason, the French government is understandably willing, even eager, to “cooperate” with representatives of that Islamic nation whenever they have a small request to make.
As the president of the republic stated to his cabinet, “Whatever Hussid wants, fellas, Hussid gets.”
It wasn’t only the oil that placed Hussid high in French esteem and made them unusually sensitive to Hussid’s feelings. Air Hussid, wholly owned by the government of Hussid, which is to say the Royal Family, was one of the few customers France had for its famous, supersonic jet transport, Le Discorde. Le Discorde was truly a magnificent flying machine that could fly faster and farther than any other airliner in commercial service. There was only one small problem with it. It carried only sixty-eight passengers in the “tourist” configuration and forty-four in the first-class configuration. (First-class passengers were not required to ride with their knees under their chins.) When seat space was computed against air speed and hourly operating costs, airline cost accountants had come up with what is known as the “seat-mile figure.” This is how much it cost one passenger to go one mile. In the belief that there really wasn’t much of a market for air transport, even supersonically, or even considering inflight snacks catered by Maxim’s at the rate of $0.35 per sea
t air mile (or $1,697.50 one way between New York and Paris, as opposed to a first-class price of $501.10 on an old-fashioned Boeing 747), the world’s airlines had been somewhat reluctant to buy Le Discorde.
This was denounced by the French government as one more proof of CIA interference in international affairs, but to no avail. The only airline that purchased Le Discorde (except of course, Air Hussid) was Air France. Air France, like Aero-Industrie Franchise, which manufactured Le Discorde, is government owned, and since it is spending the taxpayers’ money, is not forced to consider such archaic notions as profit and loss.
Air Hussid bought six Le Discorde aircraft as a gesture of Franco-Hussid friendship. One of them was reserved for the personal use of His Islamic Majesty the King, and one each was assigned to His Islamic Majesty’s ambassadors to France, the United States, and Japan. One Le Discorde was converted to cargo usage and plied regularly between Paris and El Lio, Hussid’s capital, carrying freshly baked French bread, croissants, snails, caviar, and other delicacies. The sixth plane was given to Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug, reigning monarch of the shiekhdom of Abzug, in keeping with the old Arabic customs of hospitality.
“What the hell is that?” asked the sheikh of the king, when he saw the somewhat odd-looking craft at El Lio International Airport.
“It’s yours,” replied the king. “I have half a dozen.”
Few Americans, not including the secretary of state, understood the relationship between the governments of France and Hussid. One of those who understood it rather well was Colonel Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux, president and chief executive officer of the Chevaux Petroleum Corporation, International, who was a close friend of both the heir apparent to the throne of Hussid, His Royal Highness Prince Hassan, and His Islamic Majesty, Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug.
The Royal Hussid-Bayou Perdu Oil Corporation, a joint venture of His Islamic Majesty and the Chevaux Petroleum Corporation, held the monopoly on Abzugian oil. As a token of respect, His Majesty had ennobled Colonel de la Chevaux as Sheikh Seroh Ecaf, and his Islamic Majesty, in turn, had been admitted to membership in the Bayou Perdu Council, K of C, and subsequently appointed Grand Knight Commander of the Ballet, His Majesty having shown a deep interest in the Bayou Perdu Council’s marching baton twirlers.
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