Slapstick Or Lonesome No More! Part 11

SOPHIE DIVORCED ME, of course, and skeedaddled with her jewelry and furs and paintings and gold bricks, and so on, to a condominium in Machu Picchu, Peru.

Almost the last thing I said to her, I think, was this: "Can't you at least wait until we compile the family directories? You're sure to find out that you're related to many distinguished women and men."

"I already am am related to many distinguished women and men," she replied. "Goodbye." related to many distinguished women and men," she replied. "Goodbye."

In order to compile and publish the family directories, we had to haul more papers from the National Archives to the powerhouse. I selected files from the Presidencies of Ulysses Simpson Grant and Warren Gamaliel Harding this time.

We could not provide every citizen with directories of his or her own. It was all we could do to s.h.i.+p a complete set to every State House, town and City Hall, police department, and public library in the land.

One greedy thing I did: Before Sophie left me, I asked that we be sent Daffodil and Peanut directories all our own. And I have a Daffodil Directory right here in the Empire State Building right now. Vera Chipmunk-5 Zappa gave it to me for my birthday last year. It is a first edition-the only edition ever published.

And I learn from it again that among my new relatives at that time were Clarence Daffodil-11 Johnson, the Chief of Police of Batavia, New York, and Muhammad Daffodil-11 X, the former Light-Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, and Maria Daffodil-11 Tcherka.s.sky, the Prima Ballerina of the Chicago Opera Ballet.

I am glad, in a way, incidentally, that Sophie never saw her family directory. The Peanuts really did seem to be a ground-hugging bunch.

The most famous Peanut I can now recall was a minor Roller Derby star.

Hi ho.

Yes, and after the Government provided the directories, Free Enterprise produced family newspapers. Mine was The Daffy-nition The Daffy-nition. Sophie's, which continued to arrive at the White House long after she had left me, was The Goober Gossip The Goober Gossip. Vera told me the other day that the Chipmunk Chipmunk paper used to be paper used to be The Woodpile The Woodpile.

Relatives asked for work or investment capital, or offered things for sale in the cla.s.sified ads. The news columns told of triumphs by various relatives, and warned against others who were child molesters or swindlers and so on. There were lists of relatives who could be visited in various hospitals and jails.

There were editorials calling for family health insurance programs and sports teams and so on. There was one interesting essay, I remember, either in The Daffy-nition The Daffy-nition or or The Goober Gossip The Goober Gossip, which said that families with high moral standards were the best maintainers of law and order, and that police departments could be expected to fade away.

"If you know of a relative who is engaged in criminal acts," it concluded, "don't call the police. Call ten more relatives."

And so on.

Vera told me that the motto of The Woodpile The Woodpile used to be this: "A Good Citizen is a Good Family Woman or a Good Family Man." used to be this: "A Good Citizen is a Good Family Woman or a Good Family Man."

As the new families began to investigate themselves, some statistical freaks were found. Almost all Pachysandras Pachysandras, for example, could play a musical instrument, or at least sing in tune. Three of them were conductors of major symphony orchestras. The widow in Urbana who had been visited by Chinese was a Pachysandra Pachysandra. She supported herselfand her son by giving piano lessons out there.

Watermelons, on the average, were a kilogram heavier than members of any other family.

Three-quarters of all Sulfurs Sulfurs were female. were female.

And on and on.

As for my own family: There was an extraordinary concentration of Daffodils in and around Indianapolis. My family paper was published out there, and its masthead boasted, "Printed in Daffodil City, U.S.A."

Hi ho.

Family clubhouses appeared. I personally cut the ribbon at the opening of the Daffodil Club here in Manhattan-on Forty-third Street, right off Fifth Avenue.

This was a thought-provoking experience for me, even though I was sedated by tri-benzo-Deportamil. I had once belonged to another club, and to another sort of artificial extended family, too, on the very same premises. So had my father, and both my grandfathers, and all four of my great grandfathers.

Once the building had been a haven for men of power and wealth, and well-advanced into middle age.

Now it teemed with mothers and children, with old people playing checkers or chess or dreaming, with younger adults taking dancing lessons or bowling on the duckpin alleys, or playing the pinball machines.

I had to laugh.

38.

IT WAS ON THAT particular visit to Manhattan that I saw my first "Thirteen Club." There were dozens of such raffish establishments in Chicago, I had heard. Now Manhattan had one of its own. particular visit to Manhattan that I saw my first "Thirteen Club." There were dozens of such raffish establishments in Chicago, I had heard. Now Manhattan had one of its own.

Eliza and I had not antic.i.p.ated that all the people with "13" in their middle names would naturally band together almost immediately, to form the largest family of all.

And I certainly got a taste of my own medicine when I asked a guard on the door of the Manhattan Thirteen Club if I could come in and have a look around. It was very dark in there.

"All due respect, Mr. President," he said to me, "but are you a Thirteen Thirteen, sir?"

"No," I said. "You know I'm not."

"Then I must say to you, sir," he said, "what I have to say to you.

"With all possible respect, sir:" he said, "Why don't you take a flying f.u.c.k at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying f.u.c.k at the mooooooooooooon?"

I was in ecstasy.

Yes, and it was during that visit here that I first learned of The Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped-then a tiny cult in Chicago, but destined to become the most popular American religion of all time.

It was brought to my attention by a leaflet handed to me by a clean and radiant youth, as I crossed the lobby to the staircase of my hotel.

He was jerking his head around in what then seemed an eccentric manner, as though hoping to catch someone peering out at him from behind a potted palm tree or an easy chair, or even from directly overhead, from the crystal chandelier.

He was so absorbed in firing ardent glances this way and that, that it was wholly uninteresting to him that he had just handed a leaflet to the President of the United States.

"May I ask what you're looking for, young man?" I said.

"For our Saviour, sir," he replied.

"You think He's in this hotel?" I said.

"Read the leaflet, sir," he said.

So I did-in my lonely room, with the radio on.

At the very top of the leaflet was a primitive picture of Jesus, standing and with His Body facing forward, but with His Face in profile-like a one-eyed jack in a deck of playing cards.

He was gagged. He was handcuffed. One ankle was shackled and chained to a ring fixed to the floor. There was a single perfect tear dangling from the lower lid of His Eye.

Beneath the picture was a series of questions and answers, which went as follows:

QUESTION: What is your name?

ANSWER: I am the Right Reverend William Uranium-8 Wainwright, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped at 3972 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

QUESTION: When will G.o.d send us His Son again?

ANSWER: He already has. Jesus is here among us. He already has. Jesus is here among us.

QUESTION: Why haven't we seen or heard anything about Him? Why haven't we seen or heard anything about Him?

ANSWER: He has been kidnapped by the Forces of Evil. He has been kidnapped by the Forces of Evil.

QUESTION: What must we do?

ANSWER: We must drop whatever we are doing, and spend every waking hour in trying to find Him. If we do not, G.o.d will exercise His Option.

QUESTION: What is G.o.d's Option?

ANSWER: He can destroy Mankind so easily, any time he chooses to. He can destroy Mankind so easily, any time he chooses to.

Hi ho.

I saw the young man eating alone in the diningroom that night. I marvelled that he could jerk his head around and still eat without spilling a drop. He even looked under his plate and water gla.s.s for Jesus not once, but over and over again.

I had to laugh.

39.

BUT THEN, just when everything was going so well, when Americans were happier than they had ever been, even though the country was bankrupt and falling apart, people began to die by the millions of "The Albanian Flu" in most places, and here on Manhattan of "The Green Death."

And that was the end of the Nation. It became families, and nothing more.

Hi ho.

Oh, there were claims of Dukedoms and Kingdoms and such garbage, and armies were raised and forts were built here and there. But few people admired them. They were just more bad weather and more bad gravity that families endured from time to time.

And somewhere in there a night of actual bad gravity crumbled the foundations of Machu Picchu. The condominiums and boutiques and banks and gold bricks and jewelry and pre-Columbian art collections and the Opera House and the churches, and all all that, eloped down the Andes, wound up in the sea. that, eloped down the Andes, wound up in the sea.

I cried.

And families painted pictures everywhere of the kidnapped Jesus Christ.

People continued to send news to us at the White House for a little while. We ourselves were experiencing death and death and death, and expecting to die.

Our personal hygiene deteriorated quickly. We stopped bathing and brus.h.i.+ng our teeth regularly. The males grew beards, and let their hair grow down to their shoulders.

We began to cannibalize the White House almost absent-mindedly, burning furniture and bannisters and paneling and picture frames and so on in the fireplaces, to keep warm.

Hortense Muskellunge-13 McBundy, my personal secretary, died of flu. My valet, Edward Straw-berry-4 Kleindienst, died of flu. My Vice-President, Mildred Helium-20 Theodorides, died of flu.

My science advisor, Dr. Albert Aquamarine-1 Piatigorsky, actually expired in my arms on the floor of the Oval Office.

He was almost as tall as I was. We must have been quite a sight on the floor.

"What does it all mean?" he said over and over again.

"I don't know, Albert," I said. "And maybe I'm glad I don't know."

"Ask a Chinaman!" he said, and he went to his reward, as the saying goes.

Now and then the telephone would ring. It became such a rare occurrence that I took to answering it personally.

"This is your President speaking," I would say. As like as not, I would find myself talking over a tenuous, crackling circuit to some sort of mythological creature-"The King of Michigan," perhaps, or "The Emergency Governor of Florida," or "The Acting Mayor of Birmingham," or some such thing.

But there were fewer messages with each pa.s.sing week. At last there were none.

I was forgotten.

Thus did my Presidency end-two thirds of the way through my second term.

And something else crucial was petering out almost as quickly-which was my irreplaceable supply of tri-benzo-Deportamil.

Hi ho.

I dared not count my remaining pills until I could not help but count them, they were so few. I had become so dependent upon them, so grateful for them, that it seemed to me that my life would end when the last one was gone.

I was running out of employees, too. I was soon down to one. Everybody else had died or wandered away, since there weren't any messages any more.

The one person who remained with me was my brother, was faithful Carlos Daffodil-11 Villavicencio, the dishwasher I had embraced on my first day as a Daffodil.