Dr. Stewart Hardlypie

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.”

Tags: Emergence //