Smoke In the Sanctuary from A Gremlin in His Goober
rebelholler.com
Thanks mostly to Billy's rumored exploits, but also to Hilda's growing haughtiness, certain members of the opposition DoNothing press began in the waning years of the administration to contemptuously refer to the first couple as "those Arkansaw Bumkins." Billy was amused at this tactic, but it enraged Hilda, who quietly despised Arkansaw and everything about it. She reveled in her own blueblood ancestry and regarded Billy's lineage, which was very southern, with absolute contempt.
I rarely saw Hilda or the Grimm, as Billy and Hilda, you will recall, lived separate lives on either end of the White Castle. Once I did see Hilda upbraid a trembling chambermaid who had accidentally looked the first lady in the eye while dutifully clipping her toenails. The Grimm loomed hunching above the pair, and then it bent down sniffing curiously towards the poor girl, who fainted on the spot.
To the best of my knowledge, Hilda and the Grimm spent most of their time ensconced in the Ivory Tower, utterly cut off from the world, except for an occasional foray into the countryside to kidnap brats or trample down the gardens of the unruly youngsters known as "flower children." There were, however, two incidents that brought me in close contact with the duo, and the first involved these selfsame flower children.
Back then the youth were prone to lawlessness, most of which was innocent, and some of which was actually quite philosophically sound. One rite of passage for any youngster who didn't want to be seen as complicit with the status quo (which every generation rejects in youth) was to smoke the flowers of the fabled lotus plant. This so-called "evil weed" has a mild narcotic effect, producing a euphoria that is said to last all day.
The flower children were so named because they tended to smoke these lotus flowers, which they called ma-na, on a regular basis. While this habit made them some of the most peaceable and humble citizens in the land, it had the intolerable side effect of distancing them from the strict economic regime of the times. Therefore, although both Hilda and Billy had smoked plenty of the stuff in their own youths, the Bumkin administration continued the State policy of putting lotus smokers in jail.
The Grimm proved to have, quite literally, a nose for lotus plants, as its actual olfactory apparatus came off an unfortunate lotus farmer from a west coast chain gang. Whenever Hilda got the urge to throw her weight around, she and the Grimm would patrol the fields and farmlands in search of patches of the evil weed. If they found one, and they almost always did, the Grimm would trample down the plants, and then Hilda would send constables to arrest and jail the landowners. Later, the Barrister General's office would confiscate the land. You could hardly dream up a better real estate racket.
One winter evening after just such a patrol, the Grimm came home with a lotus flower inadvertently wedged between its gnarled fingers. By chance, Woody happened to detect this flower (which, after all, was a cousin of his) as he passed the Grimm lurking in a remote hallway near the chambermaids' boudoirs.
Woody promptly transferred the weed to Billy in the Oblong Office. Billy emptied the tobaccy from a nearby cigar and then filled it back up with the lotus.
"I'm just gonna taste it," he beamed as he promptly stoked up the cigar. "If anyone asks, I don't really inhale."
Before long Hilda, having smelled the sweet smoke clear on up in the Ivory Tower, made an appearance, followed as always by the Grimm.
There were two lush pink sofas full of deep folds facing each other in the Oblong Office; Billy shared one with Woody while Hilda shared the other with the Grimm. And there they sat, passing the fragrant cigar back and forth, except for the Grimm, as I attended to my work at Billy's desk.
Woody took an effeminate draw on the cigar and said with scientific detachment, "That is the lotus, or indicativa, with a hint of berry."
"You...should.....know.......Wood-Man," Billy chuckled between chokes after a particularly massive hit.
When Hilda took a breath of the smoke, her arrogant visage didn't change a lick, but her voice did become just a tad softer. "I think I'll go look for those missing files," she said wistfully. "There's no way I'll find them now."
Billy bogarted a series of hits from the cigar then passed it to the Grimm, which had lingered after Hilda left as if ashamed to indulge itself in front of its mistress yet intrigued by the lotus flower itself. The Grimm inspected the sticky, smoldering butt then promptly ate it, cherry and all!
Billy hooted and guffawed like a lunatic at this, while the monster belched a little dank smoke and slumped away. "Wow, man," the president chortled as the last wisps of the pungent, skunky smoke slithered up from his nostrils. "There's, like moss growin' on my brain!"
To which Woody, in the only remotely emotional display I had ever seen from him, promptly snapped his twig fingers in accord.
The other incident that brought me in close contact with Hilda and the Grimm wasn't quite so innocent. It involved a little stone chapel in the countryside, where an infinitely stubborn and cocksure southern preacher decided one day to defy sworn agents of the United State. These agents merely wanted to search the chapel for the preacher's shotgun and his saw, on the legal theory that having both items would constitute a conspiracy to possess a sawed-off shotgun, which everybody knows is illegal.
Well, the preacher challenged the logic of the search warrant that was presented by the agents, claiming that he used the saw to saw wood and the shotgun to chase government agents off his property, which is precisely what he proceeded to do.
At dawn of the next morning, a crack squad of State operatives assaulted the chapel, where the preacher had presciently ensconced his flock awaiting the End. Unfortunately for these operatives, who were gunning for a budget increase from Billy, things didn't go quite as planned. Owing to the skill of the masons and carpenters who had built the little structure and to the shrewd preparation of its occupants, this crack squad failed miserably to penetrate the obstinate preacher's sanctuary.
For week upon week thereafter, the preacher and his naive penitents absolutely refused to abandon their chapel, on the legal theory that they should be left the hell alone. Inside they had stashed great stores of food, huge cisterns of rainwater, and several cows and goats.
This standoff put the Bumkins in a bit of a pickle. Such an act of defiance could not go unanswered. Suffice it to say that capable reinforcements were brought in--in the person of Hilda's Grimm.
On a windy Monday morning, the Grimm lurched up to the door of the chapel with a flaming brand held high in one hand. With the other, it reared back and struck a blow that rent the door into splinters. These splinters it used as kindling to set the doorway of the stone chapel afire.
What happened next is a matter of profound dispute, but my own analysis of the scene suggests that things unfolded as follows. First, the Grimm set fire to a pile of pews that had been wedged against the door to repel any assault. This effectively cut off any chance of escape. Next, the monster jumped up and down with such ferocity that the ancient wooden floor of the chapel was burst asunder, sending dozens of the screaming faithful falling into the basement, which soon became an inferno. Last, Hilda's beast rammed its head violently into the stone archway that supported the great central beams in the chapel's ceiling.
Within a few moments, the stone skeleton of the chapel collapsed in upon itself as its aged wooden skin popped and roared in a conflagration to rival hell itself.
When what was left of the little chapel was cool enough to inspect, I took it upon myself to investigate. What I saw was horrible: women crushed by falling stone, children burned to embers beneath charred adults, a mother clutching a tiny corded newborn that came into this world during the Grimm's assault. Most chilling of all was the flapping flag of the United State affixed arrogantly to the belfry.
A few days later, Billy made an appearance with Hilda's Grimm in front of the White Castle. He announced concisely the conclusion of an official investigation. According to the official report, the chapel had exploded spontaneously as the result of unvented methane buildup, which was in turn caused by the illegal simultaneous containment of farm animals and young children, in violation of the health and labor codes, respectively.
As Billy turned back towards the White Castle, a brazen reporter asked the president if he regretted the horrific deaths in the chapel.
"So some religious fanatics murdered themselves," Billy sighed glibly. "So what? You can't help those people. They think they're above the law. "
And the nation, preoccupied with its petty dramas and gossip, didn't disagree. |
