Dr. Stewart Hardlypie

Hope is annoyed. “But Otto, like Mr. Goat, you have so reversed the flow of this conversation that I’m giving you information — prior to hearing the secret you were so anxious to tell!”

Otto understands with a start. “I hardly noticed! Mr. Goat asked me: What is the purpose of dog poop? and I confidentially told him, it’s the dog’s way of cleansing his internal organs, but! More importantly, it’s his way of communicating with all the other dogs in the community. Since poop bears the olfactory tags of the identity of the pooper, his exact location, health, stud status — not to mention his opinion of the state of affairs of the brethren, and greetings or rebuke directed to particular individuals… For us, poop is the quintessential epistle!”

“Then,” Otto continues, “Mr. Goat flashed the scent of the most wonderful ‘attaboy!’ I had ever received, and I settled down to appreciate what he had to say. The secret is that long ago, long before the Rabbi taught the first dog how to speak, but well after the Tower to Heaven had fallen, humans and dogs had almost undecipherable means of communication. What he meant was that bipeds had words, where quadrupeds had turds.”

Hope is fascinated. “I’m hooked and leashed!” she exclaims, tail wagging. “Tell me more!”

Otto concurs: “My reaction also! It seems that around the time dogs learned to talk, humans began to experiment with alternate forms of communication — like poop — except, no matter how skillfully messages were encoded (in brown envelopes), they smelled so badly that, with impoverished olfactory senses, the content was entirely lost! And it had no effect, other than making the recipients, uh, seriously annoyed.”

And Otto continues, more and more enjoying his narrative: “Then with an arrogance unmatched since the Tower of Heaven, human scientists hatched a plan, and called it “Babel On Too”, where they would take this most intimate mode of communication and, instead of unfruitfully sharing it with their neighbors, create a technologically advanced network of World Wide Altars, interconnected by pneumatic tubes — like at the drive-in bank — all converging on a top secret giant tube, out of which all the collected messages of mankind would be regularly launched heavenward, into space (where the Almighty is thought to reside)!”

Hope: “So, let me get this straight. What the humans supposed to be prayer… was original sin writ infinite, taking poop, the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and hurling it back in the face of the Almighty?

Otto: “As their Savior warned, the problem is surely not what goes into a man’s mouth, but what comes out of it.

Hope is very attentive in her curiosity. “So what does Mr. Goat think will happen?” she asks. “Dark times for mankind?”

Otto sneezes. “Nothing less than Armageddon! And you know what?”

Hope: “What, Otto?”

Otto’s jaw opens into a guileless grin and he pants happily. “He appointed me First Caninical Prophet! And he told me that I must gather my brothers and sisters together and build a Great Ark, except this time only animals would be saved!”

Hope: “And all this because humans were uncomfortable talking with God?”

Otto does what, for him, amounts to a solemn nod. “All this because they forgot how to wish Him joy of the morning.”

“Otto, I hate to pee on your parade,” Hope says slowly, “but Mr. Goat is more than a few kibbles short of a happy meal.”

“I know,” Otto says reasonably. “That’s why he’s returned to Doc — who’s usually short a few bits.” Otto sighs long, and muses: “But for awhile, I have to confess, I was so hopeful.”

Hope: “That’s all right, Otto. So long as you have me, you’ll always have hope!” Now it’s Hope’s turn to grin. “So, when did you suspect Mr. Goat was playing too loose with the truth?”

Otto: “To be honest, I never much cared for his potty mouth!”

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Otto: “Joy of the Lord’s day, Sister Faith!”

Hope: “Cut it out out, Otto. Mr. Goat isn’t even in the building.”

“You’re certain?” Otto asks. “Because I don’t want to disappoint him. He told me that, being without original sin, I have perfect understanding of scripture. And he said if I made a promise, he would impart the most sacred human secret, the Altar of Communication.”

“What did he ask you to promise?” Faith — er, Hope asks.

“Not to use my powers of speech or comprehension to alert bipeds that they are being watched,” Otto shares. “And I thought to myself, Sister Faith–”

Hope: “Otto!!”

Otto pauses with the air of a dog who has only recently come into his powers of intellect. “Sorry, but he was there, and told me he always knows what I’m thinking… So I try not to think disappointing thoughts.”

Hope: “But Otto, he’s not the Dog Almighty. He’s not even your master, like the Doc.”

Otto: “I know that in my head, Hope, but you know what’s my biggest obstacle to believing that? Don’t know how, and you probably won’t believe me, but he smells like the Big Fellow!”

Hope: “Hey Otto, you’re my brother, if you say Mr. Goat smells like the Dog Almighty, I believe you.”

Otto: “Thanks Sister… Hope! My heart swells with gratitude for our fellowship.”

Hope: “Otto…”

Otto: “Well, thanks anyway.”

Hope: “You’re welcome. But what about this secret Altar?”

Otto: “You mean the Altar’s secret. The Altar itself is right there in the fragrant little room the bipeds go into, to worship three times a day. You know, the one we hide in to get a drink of water, or cool off? Doc even gets mad. ‘Bad dog, shoo!’ ever since I was a pup.”

Hope: “Me too… Always got the feeling that was Holy Ground. No dogs allowed!”

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“Stewart!”

The call of Bethany, Mrs. Doctor Stewart Hardlypie (sometimes referred to as SHE WHO MUST NOT BE CONTRADICTED):

“What have you done this time? Why are all these Christian ads peppering our website? Nothing against Christians, but Stewart, you’re a Jewish doctor treating the Devil and God forgive us, you even like him! Why must you always keep the wolves away from our door by inviting them in for a snack? You know,” she adds suddenly, musing: “The Christians might just be circling their wagons to fire a few arrows into the Body of Satan.” She pauses thoughtfully, the image of Doctor as Collateral Pin Cushion beginning to lighten a traditionally dark conversation.

“Then let she who is without sin loose the first arrow!” cries the Doctor, a passable imitation of Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill.

“That’s not funny, Stewart,” Bethany snips. (That’s not “Funny Stewart” — Excellent! muses the Doc, for whom all roads circle back like a question mark.) “And besides,” his wife continues, “you can’t just warehouse the Devil and collect his health insurance if he doesn’t make any progress — Christians or no Christians!”

Our Good Doctor is abashed. “Why not? The Devil invented health insurance!”

“And to my way of thinking,” his beloved spouse continues, barely listening, “isn’t that the very definition of Satan, the one who does not make progress?”

“Oh, he’s already making progress, dear.”

“And how do you figure that, Dr. Alienist?”

“Very simple,” Hardlypie observes: “Now, whenever His Honor has an attack of Tourette’s, he squeaks, ‘HARRY POTTER IS THE SON OF GOD!’”

Otto: “Why hello, Faith! Joy of the Lord’s mornin’ to you!”

Hope: “Huh? The name’s “Hope”, you know — your sister?”

Otto: “Yes, Sister Faith, we have given you a new Christian name. Especially since it is Mr. Goat’s contention that we ABANDON ALL HOPE!”

Hope: “Just gettin’ with the program, Otto… So now I’m Sister Faith.”

Otto: “Yup! Couldn’t very well call you Cephas!”

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I’m a-going to stay where ya sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk who invented work
In the big rock candy mountains…

He never should have left his chair, or floated down the concrete stairs to the road, light as a feather. He imagined, once there, that if he hauled buns he’d get far enough to evade the spy glasses of the guards, perhaps even the keen smell of the dogs, who even now trolled for the scent of the arm they’d tasted, the remainder of a meal they were eager to finish.

And when that light, easy feeling was gone — when the hard black asphalt sizzled beneath the questionably grounded soles of his boots and the inhuman heat rose in curls and waves, threatening to stagger him and sink him into the earth — he remembered the iron ball chained to his right ankle, heavy, inexorable. It was only a matter of time before his Judas right leg brought him down.

No one saw him. The grounds of the compound were tidy, even friendly, belying the cauldron of mean spirit boiling inside. To his right was a line of high wooden fence; corkscrews of barbed wire spiraled across its top, seamlessly joining a brick wall and an iron gate. It was all impervious to escape from within, or assault from without. In the sky, three vultures circled lower to the ground, while other birds well out of range squawked: “Guilty, Guilty…”

His guilt was as undeniable as the carnivorous beating of approaching wings; as undeniable as the heat, rising to take him. It weighted him down, and down he would go, like a stone.

Last week, solidly ensconced in his discontent body, he had visited his nephew. Buck and Sara were beating the heat by making some; sequestered in their bedroom for the last few hours, according to the note they left their uncle, they were “playin’ Scrabble”. He was to kindly wait in the little den, and keep himself occupied until someone won. He’d traveled a long ways, his normally well-fed belly missing its customary fare, and getting over that mountain pass, that had taken some time. The contents of the lone can of beans that had at first, if not filled, at least inflated his belly, were all finally parceled out to their appointed depositories, and he was left now with a dry aching hole in his gut. It was, in fact, unbearable. As dinner time came and went, he got so hungry that he meant to storm the bastille (or rather, bedroom), no matter how many letters might suffer collateral damage. This hunger was unreasonable; the ignorance of his relatives, unconscionable.

From behind the wall he heard them trying to cover up a snicker, then a guffaw, as Buck said to Sara, “Put that in a pie for the ‘ol man?” But Sara only chuckled and said, “Buck, that’s hardly pie, you damn well know what that is!” And when they finally appeared through the bedroom door, their hearty greetings were matched only by their stealthy, greedy gazes at his gold watch, his expensive shoes. He saw these, and said nothing, for while they wanted what he had, he’d make them work for it. Even despite this, the emptiness in his belly consumed him.

Later on, after the large turkey dinner, Sara brought out that “hardly pie” — and no more than a brief glance at the color of its golden crust released a veritable river of new enzymes which poured, wonderfully, mercilessly, into his expectant gut. He readily forgot the overheard conversation and any thought of its context. We know men have their flaws, but the sight and scent of that pie, much more than any of these things, made his reason seize up and conspire, not to simply eat his share, but to forswear sharing. The power with which he coveted that pie brought him to a certain brink: There was no true course but to kill his nephew and the tramp he called his wife. They were worth less to him, indeed, than the perfect curves and color of that pie.

Maybe the devil will send a nice limo, to drive you both to your reward, he thought with growing confidence, thinking of the fancy car he’d promised to leave them “someday”. Though not as large as his nephew, he did have some bulk, and could move quite fast for a fat man — for an old fat man. And so when Buck sashayed close to the window, he played at bowling… and knocked his pinhead nephew clear out, down four stories, to the pavement below. As for the wife, she slipped out the door just as he began to congratulate himself for the last strike of a perfect game. I’m an old fool, he thought, but at least the pie is mine.

Well that “hardly pie” disappeared faster than corn through a goose, and left his passion sated, his brains scrambled. And then the police arrived to take him to jail.

By the middle of the night, cold in his cell, the poison — confined, as it had been, in such a delicious and perfectly shaped container — had trickled down from his blood stream to destroy most of his major organs (and a few smaller ones that tried to hang on for their lives, but didn’t have the big guys for backup). When he rose from his corpse, light as air, it was simple to just walk out of jail and hightail down the steps to the street below. But then the panic came a callin’ when he began to feel the surging heat and the weight of that iron ball dragging his right leg. In fact, he suddenly did not feel light at all.

Otto asks: “Doc, what were you doing outside in the motel parking lot? We saw you out the window without your chair walking in circles, dragging your right leg and talking to yourself.”

Hardlypie pauses. “Remember Mr. Goat, His Honor the Devil?”

Otto’s tail wags happily. “Sure do. I like Mr. Goat!”

Hardlypie answers mildly: “I was just trying to get in touch with his INNER SELF.”

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And in that very instant, Dr. Stewart Hardlypie — obsessive-compulsive biographer for the Junkyard of Reality — begins to see the first scintillations of light coloring his favorite autumn-leaf quilt, and hear the jury of birds disposing the arrival of morning.

With a great sigh that would deflate the belly of a lesser man, Hardlypie peeks heavenward and exuberantly praises the Lord. “Oh thank you, God, for springing me from my own designer hell of having to spend eternity in a coffin with Mama’s voice… Even if your messenger was the Devil himself!”

“That will do for now,” he adds, as his limited attention span shifts to more urgent matters: the inchoate litany of the prostate’s release and the belly’s desire for inflation singing together, close harmony which propels most 60-year-old men to the bathroom on the way to the kitchen. Yet, the recollection of the voice of foe (Mama) morphing into that of an honorable patient (the Devil) intrigues him, since what truly fuels his mortal life is neither bread, nor faith… but irony.

When does the diagnosis occur to Hardlypie — in midstream? Or after the cookie he attempts to swallow, outside the periphery of his wife Bethany’s inspection? “Stewart! You look like the snake who swallowed a mouse whole — gross!” (Swallowed a mouse hole, excellent! the doctor reflects. Pun!) But some processes are by nature veiled, especially those which have been shaped by the fortunes of brain damage, so let us take a short leap of faith to the doctor’s psychotherapy session, where he strives to clarify his thoughts in a manner that even the Devil himself can appreciate.

“Stewart, I’m desperate. Even more so than when we met the first time and I offered you anything to accept me as one of your patients. And now that I know your heart’s desire, I’ll surely grant it, should you cure me of God’s Repossession.”

“Heart’s desire?” the doctor asks, shifting his right leg across his left — a pale attempt to mirror a posture which the devil effects gracefully.

“Why yes, Stewart. I can arrange it so that, wherever you journey, you’ll never again be trapped in a coffin at the mercy of your mother’s voice!” Hardlypie feels a prickle of panic at the very possibility that there’s something worse than Mama’s tirade bed-fellowing his coffin forever, but he’s determined not to go there.

“You see, Stewart, I’m losing control,” the Devil continues, pausing to gaze downward in introspection and then suddenly bursting forth, out of nowhere, with a volley of squeaks and the explosive pronouncement: “JESUS IS THE SON OF GOD, PRAISE THE LORD!” He bites off the end, intensely embarrassed, and continues. “It just pops out of me, like some distasteful heavenly weasel, and I fear I can’t go on. Tell me you’ve treated cases of Repossession before, that I need not abandon all hope.” The Devil’s tone is hopeful, but his manner powerfully, pridefully crestfallen.

“Your Honor, you seem to have me at a disadvantage,” Dr. Hardlypie begins slowly. “Repossession? Surely you haven’t failed to make a monthly payment on your car.”

“Oh no, Stewart — the Hearse has been paid up in perpetuity. It’s my soul, you see. The All Mighty gets on His High Horse every few thousand years and proclaims, ‘ALL SOULS ARE MINE’, and now He’s welshed on His Covenant which designates me THE OTHER CHOICE for all eternity. Why, curse me, Stewart, I cry like a baby all the time now, and between you and me I’m not the crying kind.” At the termination of this sad statement, Hardlypie now flashes an entirely fraudulent smile of confidence, belying his sudden realization that he may not know anything about anything… and yet here is another patient who actually believes in him.

“Your Honor,” Hardlypie asks intently, “Are you familiar with children and adults who, try as they might, fail to prevent obscenities from bursting forth in speech, against a background of transient motor dysfunction, tics and the like?”

“Yes, of course,” the Devil replies, a smile darkening his handsome features as he recalls a moment of pleasure: “Georges Gilles, a most creative medical student who suggested my Body of Satan might chorus magnificent obscenities, if I merely rewired those I sought to possess, a ridiculously easy feat of legerdemain for one like me, the Emperor Of Affliction. Ha ha, for that suggestion I greased his way through medical school though his hands shook so badly, patients experienced shock and awe when he introduced himself as their doctor. And, beg pardon my minute of pride,” chuckles the Devil, “As a conscript in the French army, he was the first soldier to occasion the term ‘friendly fire’!”

“But Stewart,” the Devil continues, “How utterly amazing. You’re telling me my spiritual contract with God has never been in danger, that aeek — JESUS IS THE SON OF GOD — BLAST…!”

“Yes indeed, Your Honor,” Hardlypie reassures despite the dramatic interruption. “For you have been immortally afflicted with Georges Gilles de la Tourette’s Syndrome!”

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