Stone Back and the Smelly Flowers

Stone Back and the Smelly Flowers

       by D. B. A. G. B. J. H. A. Z. Reimer

Childbirth makes us all grow up. Till then, we idle in adolescence and spin in youth's early dawn, spin in summer. Penelope spun in the death of the suitors she'd wearied of. Man of the house, long gone, now back, spun out the thread of his own life a few years, lengthened the imaginary life of his in sealing the love of his woman and a promise to be more faithfully home from then on. He spun out the length of his death line a good many years by having later to spin yarns about his killing for her. He killed for her who missed him at home. He swiftly took the lives of fifty useless men with his deadly bow and then, appeased, she let him into her bedroom once more even though he'd been gone ten years too many.

       When I am gone two hours too many my wife has plans for my return and her revenge is sweet to her and puzzling to me. When or if I'd be gone two months too long the loss of my foreskin at least would not seem unreasonable. To her. Ten years and then her having knit and reknit the same abominable chunk of tapestry all those nights and days and not take serious soothing? I don't think so.

       Odysseus left soon after again because she could not stand him home. Gone a second time, no one has thought to write about it because beneath notice. Once those first two gones are over and the tenacity of the need to appease and reduce to appeasing are satisfied, nothing remains to tell and a man may retire or die for all that story cares. A woman, too. She then finds herself knitting things for other's babies. And, she discovers herself discovering autoeroticism in a nonchalant way. She then occurs only, coming to awareness of this or that, planning such and such a party, remaining loyal to him or her, sleeping in a snoring way with him or her, rescuing Tanya or Herbert from an orphanage, slipping into nighties that many see and many don't wish to see, buying sixty dollar pairs of panties of the same effect, peeing, eating, bundling, whipping, saturating, scolding, lamenting, loving, halting, and swimming, each for big reason and no notice, all for nothing.

       Stories ever only concern the first two leavings and comings and then are over.

       Wyhdbum left home when he was thirteen and went to sea. His father scolded him for it and promised disaster, but Stilther listened to no word of it. His mother he kissed and ran from in the midst of her blustering. He made his own story long by spending many years landbound, surrounded by ocean at a locale many weeks from his native Scotland.

Ambitious and handy both, he invented housing, food, powder and shot, storage, reading, nautical engineering and navigation, ship masonry and a good many other disciplines useful to his stay there. When he saw sails at last and hailed them to him, he felt a sharp regret to be rejoining humankind, and he returned to his distant solitary stampings as soon as ever he could some years later--this time with no intention of being left marooned and helpless--and after making peace with his father, love to his mother, and money for his future. Not a year following his return to his island, his dog died who had been such a loyal companion there on Wyhdbumland. This loss did discourage him and for a long time, but eventually, at the age of eighty-nine, Stilther purchased of another canine, one with feline features and a missing hind leg and one missing front leg, and with this creature at his side he toured the world.

       Once when attacked by pirates he helped his Sniggles out of a jam by accosting the bandit what had the poor beast aholt by his front leg, and so hurt him over his pate that that miscreant let go of the valiant Sniggles at once and ran for good measure. Another time, when engaged in peeing against a good old cottonwood of enormous size and girth, a few miles from Headersville, Kt., a group of girls harmed the mongrel in their inappropriate inspection of his undersides. They had just completed some operation on him with a sharp object, and were feeling of him in voluptuous ways when Stilther intervened and strongly advised to leave that poor puppy alone unless they wished for the same to be done to them, and poste haste at that. They agreed they wouldn't mind and he obliged them unwillingly, afraid that Sniggles would be gone by the time he had given each of les jeune fille Headersville a proper turn.

       Sniggles showed his observant nature in that instance, however, because he stayed close to the six of them, and once or twice when his master came up on top he, Stilther, saw that canine's enormous eyes glued to their bottoms, and watching with more than obvious interest the ins and outs of their oifings. Stilther remonstrated sharply with Sniggles, calling for him to step away for honor's sake and to leave them to their business, to let them to themselves without a third pair of eyes on them, but the clever dog, sensing Wyhdbum's predicament without any hands free to reign him in, stood his ground and throughout the ordeal barked and whined as if hurting himself. He received a severe thrashing when the spectacle was done but he did not mind and thanked his master by licking him about the mouth and nostrils afterwards and for many days to follow.

       He was a good dog, a fine animal, a remarkable cur, and Wyhdbum never regretted, except for once, the acquisition of so beautiful a specimen. That once occurred when Sniggles came loping up to Stilther barking just as that fellow was spying on a young lady of his choosing as she was getting into the shower at her own home with the blind up and thinking herself alone and unobserved. Startled, limped by that limping loony, Stilther roared out his surprise and got caught in the act by the father of the girl who himself had a set of binoculars strung around his neck and held in hand at the time he noticed the intruder and, careful to keep his voice down, resolutely sent Wyhdbum in shame from the premises. Sniggles received this time not only a tongue but a hand lashing that he would remember, accompanied by inconsolable whining, till the end of his days.

       The occasion he brought his wagon to the yard of a farmwife who was planting Chrysanthemums, Wyhdbum entirely forgot because it did not speak well of him, and by this I--his neighbor's wife, randomly choosing him as the subject of a brief narrative biography for a class in remedial English required in order to enroll in an undergraduate program at the University of _______--mean the following. Wyhdbum found the flowers smelly and distasteful. Not only that, when it became clear that he would not be touching the hands that touched the flowers she had given him on his departure from the yard, he felt a strong resentment against all flowers and flung them into the shrubbery by the roadside where the hapless wife later saw them as she rode by with her husband in his new wagon and fine team of horseflesh. The blooms were like children lying there, Elizabeth thought when she saw them discarded. I wish I had them, she thought, back in my hands and had never given them to that shameful vagabond. Wine tonight is what I need to help me forget about human ingratitude, she reflected. With that she fiercely whipped the team, barking for them to hurry up, and when she looked at her husband she told him in no uncertain tones to stop that oggling of her at once if he knew what was good for him.