NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Diddlie and Daisy are standing in Daisy’s front yard ready for rain. Daisy waves with her yellow souwester on, though they are talking under a huge umbrella with panels in pink, yellow, white and purple with a Snaz logo on each. It isn’t raining yet but low cloud, thick and gray, is pressing much of the light out of the day. It feels as if we are in pre-dawn gloom and it is well after noon. The Fauxmont militia left me a flyer last night asking me to join, and inviting me to join a deer hunt to cull their rising numbers locally. A link to CUPA’s web site is shown at the bottom in bold face type, prompted me to consider further exciting new initiatives explained there. “Are you armed for self-defense yet? Do it while you can!” said Albrecht’s handwritten note. I had noticed Steve Strether coming towards me with Lambert, a few houses down Bails Lane from Daisy’s. Now Lambert is backtracking so they are walking away from us as I join the two under the umbrella.
“Where are they?”
“They have grown too big.”
“What do you mean, too big?”
“Dante, Gabriel and Rossetti, they are the size of small dogs! I had no idea Diddlie. I thought they were going to be hamsters’ size.”
“Didn’t any one tell you when you bought them?”
“I didn’t buy them. Lizzy Siddall brought them over from Australia as a present when she was visiting.”
“Lizzy should have told you!”
“Well, I don’t remember, maybe she did.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I have farmed out Gabriel and Rossetti to friends but Dante is here, or he was. Now I can’t find him. Diddlie, you want a pet wombat?”
“No I don’t. The Red Queen is enough, and I don’t know if parrots and wombats get along.”
“What about you Fred? Wouldn’t you like a nice friendly Australian in your home?”
“Daisy, why don’t you keep him? I can’t take Dante. No, no, I am out too much for pets and my wife’s job leaves her with little time.”
“He’s too big! Fred, remember how cute baby Rossetti was at Hank’s barbeque?”
“Small enough to fit in a tea cozy. In fact I didn’t see much of him, it was such a good fit.”
Diddlie is tapping her i phone.
“You have got to see this.”
“Fred, we’ve been looking around the yard for him. Did you see anything as you walked over? Will you help find Dante?”
“No Daisy, haven’t seen anyone but Steve and Lambert down the road.”
“Lambert! Maybe Lambert will track down Dante, Fred?
“Have you seen this site Albrecht has started?”
“Diddlie maybe we can get Lambert on this search.”
“I hear Albrecht wants to privatize Congress.”
“It is more than that Fred. CUPA has launched a campaign to give Corporations the vote.”
“How? They aren’t mentioned in the Constitution. Only citizens have the right.”
“Fred, it was land owning white male citizens in fact.”
“Daisy I realize we have only gradually come to universal suffrage.”
“Not quite Fred, hear this; “corporations are effectively persons in court, says CUPA, and they should be voters too. It is right here in the talking points.”
“Our great Corporations are the most productive organizations in history. They collectively express the will of the American people to improve the lives of individuals the world over, and should not be denied the right to vote a day longer.”
“Diddlie that is not convincing. Are you going to help find Dante?”
“Of course Daisy … but just understand this idea. “… to have companies issue special national election voting stock. The wealthiest and most productive voters will be able to buy the most stock and cast the number of votes proportional to their wealth.”
“Seems they have forgotten the idea of one person, one vote Didd.”
“Yeah, it was one man one vote as the founding Dads wrote it.”
“Picky, picky, picky! so political all of a sudden, Daisy.”
“They are talking about changing things Didd. Let’s keep it in perspective.”
“So if I buy a million dollars worth of voting stock in say Fibonacci Corporation, is that for me to vote or for them to vote?”
“It’s for you to vote sponsored by the company … but is Fib. stock for sale?”
“So corporations aren’t getting the right to vote … Fibonacci better not!”
“Boyd says it is a way of replacing political parties with companies.”
“You two are talking again!”
“Briefly, Boyd called me last Thursday to explain the idea.”
“He’s persistent isn’t he Daisy?”
“No, he’s just possessed by his ideological daemon,”
“ … or is it Albrecht?”
“Same thing Fred.”
“I’ve told him not to call again, but I listened for a while then found an excuse to hang up. I hate politics anyway, and don’t think much of our political parties right now. He knows it, but this isn’t the answer. ”
Lambert seems to be off leash rushing around in the undergrowth. It covers a common area along the old path between two lots that takes you down the hillside to Wicket Street, or used to, before the steps were washed out in the derecho. Lambert has stopped bounding around and started barking, one bark after another every few seconds, getting louder as he gets more agitated. We all start walking down the road toward Steve, who is moving toward Lambert deep in Japanese honeysuckle, with wisteria growing through it and Virginia creeper and ivy climbing it too. As we come closer he shouts something through an intervening curtain of bamboo thicket, but we can’t make out what he is saying.
“What’s up with Lambert Steve?” A Carolina wren answers in about six loud notes.
“Perhaps he’s found Dante!” The wren flies out of the shrubs towards the utility lines. It seems far too small for its extraordinary high volume.
“Maybe Daisy, but wouldn’t Dante run away from all that barking?”
“Steve is asking for a phone Diddlie.”
“Diddlie waves her’s at the bamboo, “right here Steve.”
“Call nine one, one, Lambert’s found a body.”
“A human?”
“Looks like it, Daisy.”
As Diddlie uses her phone, Daisy and I follow the tangled green trail Steve had just kicked through. Steve is standing on a tree root above a deep gully with crumbling sticky clay banks freshly eroded by the recent torrential rains. Lambert is down in the stream bed sniffing something sticking out from the bank into the water. The torrent that washed through in the night is now a stream rushing along only an inch or so deep. Looks like part of a leg is protruding from the mud. Exposed from below the knee with blue denim and a foot with some of a white sock covering the lower half. Lambert is still barking and staring at the leg bumping it gently with his nose. His ears pointed as horns are directed towards the silent limb. He stops barking and looks up stream, and then growls shifting his stance to face the new threat. His stubby legs are wet and look thin as twigs where his long hair is stuck down against his skin. The rest of his coarse dry fur is matted with broken stems and leaf fragments.
“Look it’s Dante!”
Daisy steps into the stream near Lambert who jumps aside as he gets splashed by Daisy’s new pin striped wellingtons. She has to pull hard to free her boot from the clay and take the step. She calls Dante who looks at her from under his drenched fur. Daisy starts walking up the gravelly stream towards Dante who lets her pick him up and carry him back toward the street. Her wellingtons are coated in reddish yellow clay and Dante is smeared in earth tones too.
I can hear a big engine above us on the road. It’s a Hummer flying a black pennant from the antenna with an orange “don’t tread on me” logo. It pulls up with windows down releasing squawking tones from the radio. Sounds like the long code numbers Urban Safety Solutions use.
“Fred I can’t believe this … is it our militia?”
Steve is moving over towards me, and trips on a vine as he speaks. He catches his balance on an ironwood sapling.
The driver is looking at us from his vehicle. “You alright there sir?”
“He’s fine.”
Steve regains his balance and calls Lambert who is too excited to notice. The enquiry from the Hummer is followed by more electronic squawks. The door opens and the militiaman nearly falls out. His weapon caught on the doorframe. He rights himself. He adjusts his assault rifle strapping it on his back and follows Fred’s path towards us by the gully.
“Its okay, I just called 911.” Diddlie is watching from the edge of the road with Daisy.
“Why is that ma’am?”
“Looks like some one’s leg in the stream down there.”
The militiaman moves further down then jumps into the stream. It washes the clay off his boots, but his black fatigues are stained.
Lambert backs away, barking at the militiaman. “Call your dog off!”
“Steve calls Lambert again and then jumps down next to the militiaman to pick up the dog.
He bends to get Lambert.
“Clear the area! Sir, you need to get back up on the road right away.”
“Lambert has relaxed in Steve’s arms dripping with watery clay like slip from a potter’s hands and Steve moves back up to the road. A small spider climbs a hair at the top of Lambert’s left ear.
“A heavy rain drop hits the polk weed next to me, then another. Now the rain is pelting every leaf in the thicket and we are all getting soaked. The militiaman shouts at me to get back on the road and I follow Steve with our armed protector behind me. A black suburban SUV pulls up behind the Hummer with wipers racing across the windscreen.
“Where are the police?”
Diddlie, Daisy, Steve, Lambert and I have all crowded under the big Snaz umbrella.
“I called 911 Steve.”
“I am sure you did Daisy and look who answered!”
