TheJacques
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MR. CHEEVER HAS NO WILDERNESS
Chucklehead Cheever, baggy-eyed and bushy-tailed, looked about with suspicious sniffs to the air as his four-fingered grips held him to the boulder. His face was a mask of bewilderment in the wilderness.
“Uh, yeah, uh!” Cheever gabbled. “The wind blows west, the wind blows east, the wind heats an ocean and cools down a feast. Hyuckle-ti-hyuckle-ti-hyuck!”
The wind had been whipping his furs around quite dramatically all afternoon, but now the air churned itself into a legato pace of sun-melting ambrosia.
Cheever closed his eyes and remembered Africa. And innocence. And presents. And presence.
His mind ran like an antelope, eloping with an ear lobe and raising up a smile. His senses were alive and soon he turned his attention outward, taking one step after another, pacing widely and stork-stepping towards a levy.
Reaching the end of the pathway to the levy, a school of ebony cherubs chuckled at Chucklehead Cheever, jibing justly at his jowls, which made him effectively retaliate, by bursting into a belly laugh and bowling over the boys with blaring boisterousness.
"Hyuckle-ti-hyuckle-ti-hyuck!"
Mowed down and bested for this day, the ebony cherubs fluttered out of the way and let Chucklehead Cheever, at last, check his e-mail.
Cheever liked technology. It brought him a sense of active pride that he felt the rest of the forest denizens lacked sorely.
A rotating hologram of an envelope floated before the woodland user’s baggy eyes and he chuckled aloud once again with the squealing anticipation a child makes before jumping into a pool.
“I have 1 new message! Oh, goody-goody-clap-my-hands-goody,” he then looked down. “Hey! Morton. Start working.”
Morton, the mouse to whom Cheever spoke, perked up his nose and frisked his whiskers in the air. Morton was almost 78, and his sight had lost him in ’91, yet he refused to retire as many other mice did. He wanted to work till he dropped, and drop a little further till he bopped, for a gentleman mouse aims for a good bopping.
“I’m coming, Mr. Cheever! Right away!”
Morton rose to his rotund, little feet and scampered left and right on Cheever’s cherry wood desk, tugging along a white cord tied around his waist. He circled like a synchronized swimmer and gyrated like a jingling jester, and all of these maneuvers maintained the movement of the cursor on Cheever’s Photon series computer.
“Oop! That’s good, that’s good!” Cheever giggled as the cursor wafted over the envelope hologram. “Now, click!” Morton jumped up and stamped. “Great, Morton. Thank you. You’re a good mouse. While I open this message, give me the morning news.”
The much smaller Morton wiggled back up onto his haunches and put on a bowler hat of the tiniest proportions. His little lungs filled up with hot air, and out came cool riffs on current events:
“Hey, it’s 22-0-2 degrees today in the south-north hemisphere of Tree Trunk, so pack your bags tightly today if you’re anywhere near poison oak. On other wings soar the agnostic, elastic, uninterrupted bliss and flow of accosting fish, and the humming communes of free bird plumage applaud these emotional arrivals with gusto, respect, and wry witticism. For more information, go to iclearlydidntunderstandthelecturemrmorton.org , and help us transcend to .com.”
Next, the e-mail message opened and Cheever sucked in between his two jutting teeth. Before him on the screen displayed the visage of beauty a la mode; a girl with cotton pink lips of dinner and baby blue eyes of dessert. Below her read the message:
Hi. I saw your forest on the world wide web and just loved its location and size. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Bridget, I’m 23, and I’ll be 18 next month. ;-) SWF from Nigeria, but I was born in Spain, raised in Lithuania, and I speak decent Czech. I’m a model, but I call myself more of an amateur! LOL!! But when I’m not modeling, I am plucking away at my dissertation on the juxtaposition between hard-knock philosophy and soft-core pornography at Lakeshore Community College. In my underwear. LOL!!! Unfortunately, last summer my parents passed away in a heavy machinery accident and I’ve lost my house. If you’re looking for a fun, clean, reliable, good ;-D girl, then call me. I could really use just a cubby in your forest. Just a few trees and a meadow for my needs. LOL. XXOX.
hearts,
Bridget Hearth
Cheever commanded Morton to jump on Reply. He could not let this hazy temptation of earthly fulfillment slip through his fingers. So she needed some forest space. Perhaps for modeling work. Cheever had enough to spare. The forest was vast. He liked a bit of modeling. He liked her face.
“I’ll start by giving her my grandfather’s fern. Hyuckle-ti-hyuckle-ti-hyuck!”
And so it was so.
The air began to shrink around Chucklehead Cheever and his fading mouse. A clicking rumble jutted through the carpet as a horde of ravens cawed by his window. The bickering drones of machines and their men arrestingly drowned all sweet noises. Marching and stampeding footsteps clattered across the hall and Cheever shot his eyes all about him in a panicked blaze of spine-severing hysteria.
“Oh, Mr. Cheever,” wailed the infinitesimal Morton. “You’ve eaten your last nut!”
And the wind cried.
Sixteen years of a saw’s buzz turned the earth’s page and a playground of cement spilled across her four corners. Circular police officers ushered enormous families - great clusters of people like sprinkles to a doughnut– across the unmarked roads of urban permanence.
Only a few passing children, clung to their mothers’ arms, would occasionally see a small man, or maybe it was a monster, seated in the earth’s concrete center, stroking a small patch of fluff that could have been living at a time. A cardboard sign lay by him, reading: MR. CHEEVER HAS NO WILDERNESS - WILL GIVE LEAF FOR COINS.
“Leaf!” scoffed a scuffling mother, who scuttled with her scullery maid and children back to their edifice. “Why, I never. A leaf! That poor bastard could be detained for that!”
The scullery maid raised her shuffling eyebrow, “Martha, really! The children…”
“Oh, Rosalina, please. The children have heard it all before on television, so let’s just flake it off our delicate little heads, shall we? Mmkay, time for Christmas.”
The mother trudged ahead to join the onslaught of ushered mothers. The scullery maid was left to round up the children as they stared in awe at the thing called Cheever.
“Never you mind, children! Come along now!” she shooed.
“But, what is he?”
“An animal, out of the wood and out of work. Now come on.”
“Where does the animal come from?”
“Why, a forest.”
“What’s a forest!”
No more words were said as the children lost all interest and sank into the crowds of others their own age. Amidst the sea of sounds and smells, Cheever barely opened one swollen eye. He saw a pear-formed female creature of permed beauty look him up and down, shaking her head slowly with a mixture of pride and shame. He lifted up his last leaf and she took it secretively and gracefully. She dropped him a gold coin and turned around hurriedly, searching for her employers desperately.
As Cheever let the world have its way, his eyes closed for the last time.
His last thought was how kind she was, and pretty too, but how much better she would be if she only had a tail.
Chucklehead Cheever, baggy-eyed and bushy-tailed, looked about with suspicious sniffs to the air as his four-fingered grips held him to the boulder. His face was a mask of bewilderment in the wilderness.
“Uh, yeah, uh!” Cheever gabbled. “The wind blows west, the wind blows east, the wind heats an ocean and cools down a feast. Hyuckle-ti-hyuckle-ti-hyuck!”
The wind had been whipping his furs around quite dramatically all afternoon, but now the air churned itself into a legato pace of sun-melting ambrosia.
Cheever closed his eyes and remembered Africa. And innocence. And presents. And presence.
His mind ran like an antelope, eloping with an ear lobe and raising up a smile. His senses were alive and soon he turned his attention outward, taking one step after another, pacing widely and stork-stepping towards a levy.
Reaching the end of the pathway to the levy, a school of ebony cherubs chuckled at Chucklehead Cheever, jibing justly at his jowls, which made him effectively retaliate, by bursting into a belly laugh and bowling over the boys with blaring boisterousness.
"Hyuckle-ti-hyuckle-ti-hyuck!"
Mowed down and bested for this day, the ebony cherubs fluttered out of the way and let Chucklehead Cheever, at last, check his e-mail.
Cheever liked technology. It brought him a sense of active pride that he felt the rest of the forest denizens lacked sorely.
A rotating hologram of an envelope floated before the woodland user’s baggy eyes and he chuckled aloud once again with the squealing anticipation a child makes before jumping into a pool.
“I have 1 new message! Oh, goody-goody-clap-my-hands-goody,” he then looked down. “Hey! Morton. Start working.”
Morton, the mouse to whom Cheever spoke, perked up his nose and frisked his whiskers in the air. Morton was almost 78, and his sight had lost him in ’91, yet he refused to retire as many other mice did. He wanted to work till he dropped, and drop a little further till he bopped, for a gentleman mouse aims for a good bopping.
“I’m coming, Mr. Cheever! Right away!”
Morton rose to his rotund, little feet and scampered left and right on Cheever’s cherry wood desk, tugging along a white cord tied around his waist. He circled like a synchronized swimmer and gyrated like a jingling jester, and all of these maneuvers maintained the movement of the cursor on Cheever’s Photon series computer.
“Oop! That’s good, that’s good!” Cheever giggled as the cursor wafted over the envelope hologram. “Now, click!” Morton jumped up and stamped. “Great, Morton. Thank you. You’re a good mouse. While I open this message, give me the morning news.”
The much smaller Morton wiggled back up onto his haunches and put on a bowler hat of the tiniest proportions. His little lungs filled up with hot air, and out came cool riffs on current events:
“Hey, it’s 22-0-2 degrees today in the south-north hemisphere of Tree Trunk, so pack your bags tightly today if you’re anywhere near poison oak. On other wings soar the agnostic, elastic, uninterrupted bliss and flow of accosting fish, and the humming communes of free bird plumage applaud these emotional arrivals with gusto, respect, and wry witticism. For more information, go to iclearlydidntunderstandthelecturemrmorton.org , and help us transcend to .com.”
Next, the e-mail message opened and Cheever sucked in between his two jutting teeth. Before him on the screen displayed the visage of beauty a la mode; a girl with cotton pink lips of dinner and baby blue eyes of dessert. Below her read the message:
Hi. I saw your forest on the world wide web and just loved its location and size. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Bridget, I’m 23, and I’ll be 18 next month. ;-) SWF from Nigeria, but I was born in Spain, raised in Lithuania, and I speak decent Czech. I’m a model, but I call myself more of an amateur! LOL!! But when I’m not modeling, I am plucking away at my dissertation on the juxtaposition between hard-knock philosophy and soft-core pornography at Lakeshore Community College. In my underwear. LOL!!! Unfortunately, last summer my parents passed away in a heavy machinery accident and I’ve lost my house. If you’re looking for a fun, clean, reliable, good ;-D girl, then call me. I could really use just a cubby in your forest. Just a few trees and a meadow for my needs. LOL. XXOX.
hearts,
Bridget Hearth
Cheever commanded Morton to jump on Reply. He could not let this hazy temptation of earthly fulfillment slip through his fingers. So she needed some forest space. Perhaps for modeling work. Cheever had enough to spare. The forest was vast. He liked a bit of modeling. He liked her face.
“I’ll start by giving her my grandfather’s fern. Hyuckle-ti-hyuckle-ti-hyuck!”
And so it was so.
The air began to shrink around Chucklehead Cheever and his fading mouse. A clicking rumble jutted through the carpet as a horde of ravens cawed by his window. The bickering drones of machines and their men arrestingly drowned all sweet noises. Marching and stampeding footsteps clattered across the hall and Cheever shot his eyes all about him in a panicked blaze of spine-severing hysteria.
“Oh, Mr. Cheever,” wailed the infinitesimal Morton. “You’ve eaten your last nut!”
And the wind cried.
Sixteen years of a saw’s buzz turned the earth’s page and a playground of cement spilled across her four corners. Circular police officers ushered enormous families - great clusters of people like sprinkles to a doughnut– across the unmarked roads of urban permanence.
Only a few passing children, clung to their mothers’ arms, would occasionally see a small man, or maybe it was a monster, seated in the earth’s concrete center, stroking a small patch of fluff that could have been living at a time. A cardboard sign lay by him, reading: MR. CHEEVER HAS NO WILDERNESS - WILL GIVE LEAF FOR COINS.
“Leaf!” scoffed a scuffling mother, who scuttled with her scullery maid and children back to their edifice. “Why, I never. A leaf! That poor bastard could be detained for that!”
The scullery maid raised her shuffling eyebrow, “Martha, really! The children…”
“Oh, Rosalina, please. The children have heard it all before on television, so let’s just flake it off our delicate little heads, shall we? Mmkay, time for Christmas.”
The mother trudged ahead to join the onslaught of ushered mothers. The scullery maid was left to round up the children as they stared in awe at the thing called Cheever.
“Never you mind, children! Come along now!” she shooed.
“But, what is he?”
“An animal, out of the wood and out of work. Now come on.”
“Where does the animal come from?”
“Why, a forest.”
“What’s a forest!”
No more words were said as the children lost all interest and sank into the crowds of others their own age. Amidst the sea of sounds and smells, Cheever barely opened one swollen eye. He saw a pear-formed female creature of permed beauty look him up and down, shaking her head slowly with a mixture of pride and shame. He lifted up his last leaf and she took it secretively and gracefully. She dropped him a gold coin and turned around hurriedly, searching for her employers desperately.
As Cheever let the world have its way, his eyes closed for the last time.
His last thought was how kind she was, and pretty too, but how much better she would be if she only had a tail.
