SOS Gab & Eti 1.14

On their way to the Willie's Toilet Paper Imbroglio WTPI (use your secret
decoder ring) in Farafield, MD, outside the log cabin laundromat, next-door
to the Chunk'a Chew Restaurant, chomping down on another chicken weenie,
Gabriel said, "Where’s the beef?" Altuna, lapping another black'n tan, seemed
to echoe to echoe his message. Etidorpha held up the map of West Virginia and
said, "Gab, we is lost, terrible lost. How will they finds us in the
millennium?" D. Glaucomo Lardoz, son of Rusty Lardoz, sat on the bus and idly
twiddled his silver nose ring while blowing a dolomitic luddy. Kersplaat! it
went against the windshield.

Gabriel went down yesterday to the WTPI with D. Glaucomo Lardoz, the eldest
spawn of Rusty Lardoz, that he might offer up his avarice to the
craftspeople; and also because he wanted to see in what manner they would
celebrate the event, which was a new thing. He was superbly delighted with
the procession of the craftspeople on the shuttle busses; but that of the
Thimble Knockers Guild, with their shaggy beards, was equally, if not more,
beautiful. When they had finished their speechifying and viewed the
spectacle, they turned in the direction of the Scoobie Doo Dive Shop; and at
that instant T. W. Polemarkers, the son of Encephallus, chanced to catch
sight of them from a distance as they were starting on their way, and told
his assistant to run really very quickly without tripping over his splayed
feet and bid the learned party of preservationeers wait for him. The
assistant, running without hesitation or bumble, caught astride them and took
hold of Gab by the coat behind, and said, “T. W. Polemarkers desires you to
wait.”

Gab turned round, and asked T. W. Polemarkers assistant where his
sand-flogging old conch-wart of a needle-dictaphoned straw-boss was.

“There he is,” said the youth pointing with a leer and a vibrant digit,
“coming after you, if you will only wait here on this granite mark.”

“Certainly we will,” said D. Glaucomo; and in a few minutes T. W. Polemarkers
appeared to exit the Farafield Fairgrounds, and with him Antimadders, D.
Glaucomo's younger brother, Nicetryus, the son of Nicenoughus, and several
others who had spent their days peering bleary eyed and sipping cold coffee
at the hands-on workshops. There was a lot to learn about banging on things
with hammers, large and small all alike in the motion, and everyone seemed to
have a great time pounding.”

“What stone is this we stand upon? quietly inquired Gab of D. Glaucomo before
the crowd was enabled to adjoin.

“It appears a linear drut of olio semblance.”

“Ah, that explains it fully,” whispered Gab.

T. W. Polemarkers, finally catching up, slightly winded and suffering from a
perennial wedgy, said to Gab, “I perceive, Gab, that you and your companion
are already on your way.”

“You were not far Ting Wong,” Gab said, “and I could perceive you are still
wearing that blinking lighthouse on your head.”

“It is much the better of a slide show.”

“God punish the barber that sold you that hat,” said Gab in derision, “the
Halogen disrupts the universal matrix from here to Alexandria.”

“But do you see,” T. W. Polemarkers rejoined, “how many we are?”

“Of course, a gaggle, a quincentenary of preservation knowledge, a duck’s
plum of anise broth, an oracle of sound-bites, a small quarto of carpenter
ant frass, a bilious pomposity of austerity, a flat balcony without cornice,
the smelly entrails of braised road-kill, a ring around Uranus, the
eyesockets of an empty surfer’s Willies...”

“Yes, yes, enough, Gab. And are you stronger than all these? For if not, you
will have to remain bent where you are in the posterior.”

“Grandiloquent eruptions of tongue I cannot permit further upon this stiff
and rocky soil. May there not be the alternative,” Gab said, “that we may
persuade you to let us all go hence to dinner at the Terrazzo Kurwidolek
restaurant? I understand the barbie shrimp are savory, wrapped in fatty
strips of Canadian bacon with a hint of scrapie fibrils. And the wall-to-wall
carpeting is a cushion to your soles. There may even be Quack-erized
dulcimers, a black brimmed string-band, and Irish stonemasons to belabor us a
fine tune. Beside which, Etidorpha awaits there expecting this delivery of
carving chisels.”

“But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you?” Polemarkers said.

“Certainly not,” replied D. Glaucomo.

“Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.”

Antimadders added: “Has no one told you of the Pierdo-Colony stein-raising on
chairback in honor of the hostess with the mostess which will take place in
the evening?”

“With chairs!” Gab replied. “That is a novelty. Will the Thimble Knockers
carry kegs and pass them one to another during the race?”

“Yes,” said T. W. Polemarkers; “and not only so, but a festival will be
celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon after
supper and see this festival; there will be a gathering of the trades, and we
will have a good bark.”

“Stay then, and be perverse.”

D. Glaucomo said, “I suppose, since you insist, that we must.”

“Very good,” Gab replied.

Thus began another long and windless story through leaftime.

To be continued..... transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.

Copyright 1997 Ken Follett
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