Dr. Stewart Hardlypie

“Stewart, stop rummaging around for the sticks, they’re not in there.”

“No sticks, Mama, the spiritually disabled need sticks!”

“Stewart, the Navy buried you at sea. Fine sailors with legs like oak trees, squeezing 500 squeaky beasts to pipe you into heaven.”

“No sticks — bagpipe music, Mama — did I convert? You wouldn’t let me do that, would you?”

“Stewart, how many times do I have do tell you, spiritual matters are far too important to leave to a bubblehead like you (or, for that matter, to the rabbi). Trust Mama. Did I ever stain my hands with blood to feed my children?”

“Mama, why did the sailors bury me at sea?”

“We’ll talk about that later, Stewart… Let’s just say there was a terrific confusion about the sign on the back of your wheelchair and, like our President and other high public officials, you seem to have gotten the benefit of the doubt.”

“THE CAPTAIN’S WORD IS LAW, Mama, they thought I was a Captain?”

“They couldn’t disprove it. All the military records of the President’s cohort (to which you belong) had been regrettably misplaced by the administration. Congress ordered the Office of the Vice President to show cause why these records cannot be found, but first they have to find him. The Vice President is reported to be hiding out in a cave in Afganistan, or one of the clerk’s offices in the Supreme Court. And he told Congress, if they had any brains, they’d understand why he was a member of the Judicial Branch…”

“Mama, you don’t sound well. Don’t they feed you enough in heaven?”

“Feed? Why God bless me, hiccup, hiccup, oh blast!” followed by a parade of squeaks, and then: “Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Jesus Christ is the Son of…” And a horrendous sound, as if choked off.

“Mama, tell me you didn’t convert!” Hardlypie begs.

But all he hears is that squeaky voice proclaiming the Divinity of Jesus, punctuated by “Oh blast!” and “God bless me”, until a very familiar voice confesses, “Dr. Hardlypie, I’m so sorry I deceived you, but I need your help, Jesus Christ is the Son of G… Blast!”

Dr. Stewart Hardlypie, who never remembers a face, and couldn’t find his way out of a coffin if the lid suddenly popped open, knows very well who’s speaking now — and could kick himself for being tricked if he weren’t stiff from lying so long in repose. “Your Honor, what a pleasant surprise! Slumming again? Never believed I’d hear your magisterial voice in the halls of Limbo.”

“Dr. Hardlypie, you’re not in Limbo.” The voice of the Devil, always recognizable in its very particular timbre, sounds amused even in its distress. “You’re not even in your coffin. You’re just having a dream!”

Tags: Emergence by admin
1 Comment »

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, a voice was droning:

“Stewart. Wake up, Stewart. Wake up, Stewart. Wake up…”

Over and over, so many times, so that two arms bumped against the walls of a dark space, and a chubby index finger went into each of two ears. The voice droned on for maybe a half a year, when the resident of this horizontal cubicle could stand no more, and in a crinkled voice of his own began to sing to block out the noise.

“Toc toc toc,
Qui frappe a ma porte?
C’est le diable
Trouble mon plasir.”

“Steward, is that you?” the voice asked hopefully.

“Trouble mon plasir,
Oui oui oui!
Trouble mon plasir,
Non non non,
C’est le diable
Trouble mon plasir!”

And on and on, as the man in the box sang out his musical protest at the sheer indignity of being awakened at this particular time of night. Punctuated always by its rhythmic partner, “Stewart — is that you?”

How many choruses, how many volleys, how many stanzas, paragraphs, sound bites of minimalistic music would their unrelenting thrust and parry eat up? Some say six thousand years, because a Jewish mother attempting to get her son off his behind simply doesn’t give up. A hundred years later, click, and she’s singing, “Come out, come out, wherever you are, and see Mama’s nitwit who fell from a star. He fell from a star, oh haven’t you heard? He tried to start flying, but wasn’t a bird…”

“Not very nice, Mama — what do you want?” Impertinent, groggy.

“I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts, too bad my boy has lost his own,” it continued, giving the doctor a taste of his own medicine. “He never writes his mother, he’ll never get another, and now he doesn’t call her on the phone…”

“Okay Mama, I’m coming! Where are the sticks? How do you expect me to get up without…” He tried anyway, and bumped his head against the lid of the coffin so hard that you, dear reader, might fear he had chosen the second death.

Anyone who might have peeked into this most intimate of spaces (more so, in fact, than a ladies room — and they have separate stalls) could see that his chest continued to rise and fall regularly, with his belly continually speaking a language of its own. “Sugar Free Bubble Up has a pizazz, that’s what Sugar Free Bubble Up has.”

Because in truth, our intrepid doctor, alienist to the last, had retired to his own private space — not really, but only merely dead.

Tags: Emergence by admin
No Comments »