Canto Thirty-Four – The Main Flower Garden
The five tadpoles and two Earther primate adults with the bodies of children were all together again, with a very concerned lizard-girl genius in the center of the circle lost in thought.
“I can’t answer for what the plant did,” Sizzahl said, shaking her head. “It should not have done what it did.”
Brekka was being held tightly between Tanith and Menolly, the slime was almost gone from her bare green skin, wiped off by a concerned George and an even more concerned Davalon.
“You mean it shouldn’t have eaten anybody?” asked Tanith.
“No. It shouldn’t have spit Brekka out.”
The tadpoles all glared, either at the plant, which was happily munching on the scabby it was eating, or at Sizzahl.
“What do you mean?” asked Gracie Morrell.
“It is an alien life form brought here by the wise ones and left behind when they returned to their home systems. It has never let anyone live before. It ate my father and the Great General Gohmurt as they fought over the fate of this very Bio-Dome. It has eaten every naked scabby that found its way in here, including the intruder tonight. I have never known it to spit anybody out.”
“How is that a problem?” asked Alden Morrell. “We have Brekka back safe and alive.”
“Well, yes… that is a very good thing. But it means we don’t know everything about what it will do next. Can it move about and eat us at will? Who will it eat, and who will it not eat? And can we learn why?”
“I can tell you that,” said Brekka.
“Really?” Sizzahl looked skeptical.
“Yes. It can speak inside my head now that its saliva has penetrated my skin.”
“What? Perhaps you are having a delusion caused by the trauma of nearly being eaten!”
“No, it’s true. He says that in the language of the people who put out the I Love Lucy television broadcasts he is named Lester. His other two blossoms are Thing One and Thing Two.”
Gracie bent over Brekka and put a concerned hand on her cheek. She looked into Brekka’s eyes. “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”
“It’s true. I can prove it. Lester, make Thing Two waggle its leaves.”
The blossom that was not munching the scabby wiggled all eight of its leaves in a way that reminded Davalon of how Earth people wave at one another. Everyone but Brekka gasped a tiny bit.
“Tell me more,” insisted Sizzahl. “Why didn’t Lester eat you?”
“Well, it’s kinda because I don’t taste very good.”
Menolly and George giggled at that, then both looked embarrassed.
“I mean,” said Brekka, “Tellerons are more amphibian in nature and not as warm blooded as Galtorrians and Earth people. He could happily eat Sizzahl and the Morrells, but Tellerons have a body-chemistry that could make him very sick. And besides… he’s been wanting to be able to communicate with Sizzahl for a very long time, and I gave him a way to do that… or, maybe, gave her a way to do that… I guess Lester is both a boy and a girl plant at the same time.”
“Me?” said Sizzahl. “Why did he want to talk to me?”
Brekka looked up at the blossom that had engulfed her. “He says he’s sorry that he ate your father. When he ate your father, he absorbed all of your father’s thoughts and feelings… as well as the General’s thoughts and feelings. He says he knows that your father was one of the good guys… not evil like Gohmurt.”
Sizzahl began to cry. Davalon had not been certain before that moment, but now he knew that Galtorrians could feel love and have emotions just like Tellerons… and Earthers. She was not the self-sufficient little super-genius she always seemed to be. She was an orphan who missed her parents.
“Will he eat me or the Morrells now?” Sizzahl asked.
“He’s determined not to,” said Brekka, “but don’t get too close and cause temptation. His blossoms get very hungry waiting for the next scabby to wander in.”
“Is he willing to help us in trying to save this planet?” asked Sizzahl, the tears drying up.
“Of course he will,” said Brekka. “He likes the plans your father had to re-make this world into a better place for all sorts of people. And he hates plant-destroyers like Gohmurt. He promises to eat all the scabbies he can in order to help you make your father’s dream come true.”
*****
The View From My Little Town
An aerial view of Toonerville in Winter
As immigration officers round up school children and their families blocks from a school in North Carolina, Trump minion Flynn is being accused of violating the Logan Act over discussions with the Russians before Trump took office, and DeVos is being chased away from a Washington middle school by angry protesters who don’t want her sucking the intelligence out the students, I am reminded there are quieter places to go and get away from all the insane noise that is trying to kill us. Thus I head back to Toonerville, my HO scale model train town that has been packed away since we moved to Dallas in 2004. I have laid the downtown and part of the residential area out on a snowfield on the spare bed in my bedroom.
I am reminded, as I revisit Toonerville (with the Toonerville Trolley waiting down front from the train station), that I am a humor writer that writes about small town experiences and the teaching of children. I am imaginative and creative, and I have working strategies for dealing with the stress and insanity caused by all the political baboons doing the politically-charged things that political baboons do baboonishly every baboon day. There are places to go to get away from the Trump Circus’s endless monkey-house of horror.
In Toonerville, none of the clocks keep the correct time and none of them agree what time it is. Certain things are timeless. The village works together to solve its problems. What the wits and twits who chew Red Man tobacco down at Al’s General Store think about politics never leaves the checkerboards in front of the fire place. Mayor Moosewinkle at City Hall has no plans to run for State or Federal office. (Thank God for that, he’s a nut.) And officer Billy Bob Wortle, formerly from Texas, has never shot anybody of any color. The County Sheriff doesn’t even trust him to own bullets for that big old gun of his. As far as executive orders from Washington go, we mostly don’t give a damn.
Down at the Post Office, Mr. Murdoch the postman has never “gone postal” and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He loves to gossip, though. And Mr. Santucci, the hot-headed Italian owner-operator of the Farmer’s Market (who looks just like Santa Claus in the Coke ads, but is one very foul-mouthed Santa at Christmas time) secretly believes that it is the many differences between the various residents of town that keep life interesting. And old Ben Johnson, the town’s only black man, is his very best friend.
It’s a truly good feeling to live in a small town where all the people bicker and throw fits, but no one would every want to throw anyone out of town. People belong together, working for the common good. And it is a rather sad thing if the only place such a town can exist is inside my goofy old head. But if we bicker a little less and throw fits less often on the inside, won’t we be better people on the outside too?
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