WISE MEN AND A MULE
“She’s the beautifulest story ever wrote. I tell yuh she’s a dinger,and I’m a heap in favor of showin’ it to the multitude, ad lib, alsovisibly.”
“Magpie” Simpkins shifts his feet on the table and leans back in hischair, acting like he’s said something real smart.
“The best ever told,” admits “Old Testament” Tilton. “I longs to seeit portrayed piously and with feelin’ aforethought.”
“But can she be done?” asks Wick Smith. “The time is short.”
“Piperock can do anything she sets out to do,” states Magpie.
“And everything else that could possibly happen between the time shestarts and the time she finishes,” says I.
“I figured it was about time for you to say something, Ike,” opinesMagpie.
Me and “Dirty Shirt” Jones wasn’t invited to this conference, butwe’re there anyway. Buck Masterson, Wick Smith, Judge Steele, OldTestament and Magpie are the committee. Dirty said there’d likely beneed of substitutes before the meeting had gone far, so we took itupon ourselves to attend.
“Three wise men won’t be hard to find,” opines Buck.
“Town’s full of ’em,” says Dirty. “Why stop at three?”
“You’ve spoke your piece, Dirty,” states the judge.
“We’ve got to have a star, ain’t we?” asks Buck.
“Yeah, we sure have,” admits Wick.
“Beyond the shadder of a doubt in my mind,” says the judge. “The starmust be there, sheddin’ its effulgent rays across the desert, lightin’up the—uh—place, as it were. It’s goin’ to be hard to get a suitablecamule or camules.”
“Camule?” asks Buck. “Them humpbacked quadruples?”
“Cam-el,” corrects Magpie. “Yeah, we’ve got to have one. We’ve got tohave a lot of presents and——”
“Who’s going to be Sandy Claws?” asks Dirty.
“Nobody!” snaps Magpie. “Them things are out of date. We’re juststeppin’ along ahead of them ancient has-beens, yuh betcha. Nobody cango home from this celebration and say we had the same old stuff.”
“Be —— lucky if they has the use of their vocal cords ten daysafterwards,” opines Dirty. “Piperock’s Merry Christmas has alwaysknocked —— out of Happy New Year’s. I suppose you’ll frame up a deathtrap and charge us a dollar apiece to get butchered for a PiperockHoliday.”
“This is goin’ to be free,” states Magpie.
“Just like a suicide,” sighs Dirty.
“Since when was you and Ike Harper invited to this meetin’?” asksWick. “’Pears to me——”
“We’re going out,” says I, “but before we erases ourselves from yourpresence we’d like to orate open and free that we will not be part,parcel nor accessory to anything pertaining to or being of a Piperockentertainment. We will not do this nor that, and neither will we dothus and so. We will toil not and neither will we spin to any extent.Our hearts are hard and our minds are made up like a mule’s.”
“Better wait until you’re asked,” advises Magpie.
“No trouble to sound a warning,” says Dirty Shirt.
“You’d ask in vain, Magpie,” says I.
“I am full of wisdom——”
“Don’t argue with that animated flagpole,” says Dirty. “You never getno place talkin’ back to him, Ike.”
Dirty was right. I might as well argue with the shadder of death,because Magpie can’t hear nothing but his own voice in a argument, andhe knows he