Strugr

Meanwhile, the young lady and Rip were seated at a table in the tavern. The lights were low. In one corner, a poker game was being played out. In another, a piano was being strummed softly, while in the third, the outline could be seen of a broom and dustpan.

The young lady was deeply conscious of Rip's gaze, locked moodily on the opposite wall, and of his shirtfront, which was safety pinned in several places-- and of the magnet dangling on the string around his neck.

"All my life," he drawled, "I've been a drifter. Drifting here.... drifting there.... drifting, drifting.... everywhere."

The young lady coughed.

"I've seen so many things, done so many things, eaten..... so many things."

The young lady looked awkwardly at the Poker game.

"And now.... I'm ready to settle down."

"Where?" the young lady asked, bouyed up in the face of his dreary tale by a natural enthusiasm and oblivious manner.

"Right here," he yawned. "Here at this.... table...." his eyes began to close.

They were jerked open again by a feminine voice: "You wear a magnet around your neck?"

"Huh, wha- oh, yes. Magnet. I always carry my magnet," he said, fingering the string around his neck. "You see, my shirt has been through.... so many things. You may have noticed it’s a little short on buttons."

The young lady lowered her head and murmured something unintelligible.

He went on fingering the magnet, pre-digesting his words slowly: "A magnet isn’t much – but it’s all I have. It’s all I have to rely on. It's the only thing that keeps me company in the long, lonely nights; when I look for lost safety pins.

“This is why man needs woman," he continued. "Woman always carries buttons. Yes, she carries buttons, and nifty packets of needles and thread…." He turned to face the young lady-- his dark, handsome features illuminated by the streaming light of the window. "May I ask," he hesitated, "Do you-- would you have such a packet?"

The young lady looked earnestly into his deep blue eyes. "I do," she breathed.

Rip and Snort were brothers, the sons of a woman who, by dint of thorough acquaintance with religious romance literature, knew that to be truly masculine, a name must be one syllable and reflect some property of nature that is commonly associated with strength or grandeur.

The reunion was moving. So much so that Snort lost his place in his hair. He had just relocated it when the joy was shattered by what sounded like a chainsaw being let loose on a field of granite. “Just one minute, Mister:” it ratcheted. “I don’t know what kind of man you are, but I know what kind of man this other man is, and it ain't the kind who sits well with a man like me. Now I don’t know what kind of man you are, but you’re obviously the kind who will shake hands with his kind-”

“Ah, forgive me brothah,” Snort laid a ponderous hand on his brother’s back. “There appeayas to be some kind of misundahstandin’. This man appeayas to be the progenitah of some sort of daughtah, whose hanky I just fetched: and he is undah the curious impreshan that this was a proposal of marrahge.”

“HA!” the old stranger exclaimed. The young men ducked just in time, but the exclamation ricocheted off a neighboring barn and smote them in the back of the head. Rip lost his place in his hair directly and spent the ensuing declaration trying to find it. “Now just you listen here: I don’t know what kind of man you are: but if you think I think you’re the kind who would decently propose to any girl, especially my daughter, then you obviously don’t know what kind I am. I may not know what kind of man you are, but I had you pegged for the scum of the earth you could only be before I laid two eyes on you. And I was right. First you sullied my daughter’s hanky, and then you sullied her reputation. That’s just the kind of man you are, and it ain't the kind who decently proposes.”

“Mah deayah – sir,” Snort faltered. “Ah have no ideyah of what you are speakin’.”

“I’m speakin’ of you, speakin’ to my daughter in the street, is what I’m speakin’ of. And if this young man” he indicated Snort, who was taken aback by the sudden swing of the old man’s vocal engine and lost his place again “will just take my daughter into the tavern to protect her from your further depradations, I’ll show you what kind of man you are, out of this book.” And so saying he produced a weatherbeaten copy of a story of religious love, purporting to be written by a female candlepart. Snort recognized it at once: his mother had kept a copy on her bedside table.

In a few moments all that could be seen of Snort was his massive backside, disappearing at the head into an annotated edition of Donovan’s Otter.

The voice grated on: "I don't know what kind of man you are, Mister, but I know what kind of man I am. And I'm not the kind of man who lets the kind of man you are take advantage of a little girl whose daddy is the kind of a man I am. And I'm the kind who doesn't tolerate whatever kind you are speaking to my little girl in the street."

The hero gasped and stammered, "Ah... well, Ah..."

"Now you can gasp and stammer all you want to, Mister: but this is what I say. I don't know what kind of man you are: but you'll have to marry my little girl. You may be the scum of earth, for all I care: that may just be the kind of man you are: but I do care about my little girl-- that's the kind of man I am-- and I'll see her married to you before I let you or anybody else speak to her in the street. You got that, Mister?"

The hero smiled, and began to pardon himself out of the picture: "Ah see, sir, that Ah-"

"Well, that's settled. I'll go get the parson."

"But Daddy!" broke in an agitated voice, "Can't you see how unprincipled the man is? Standing on people in the street and forcing them to marry him! Ugh!" She whirled to face the hero: "I can't stand you! I wish you'd never been born!"

Her Daddy cleared his throat, a sound like the sudden shift of a ton of bricks. "We both do, Sweetheart. That's just the kind of man he is. But I don't care what kind of man he is, I won't let him take advantage of you. I'll make him marry you if it's the last thing he does; and I hope it is. That's just the kind of man I am. Because nobody speaks to my little girl in the street and gets away with it."

"But Daddy, I don't want to marry him!"

"I know, Sweetheart. He's a bad sort. But don't worry, He won't get away with it. I'll see to that. You'll be married before sundown."

The girl groaned.

Just then, the shadow of a tall, dark and handsome stranger fell ominously over the little group. The stranger alighted from his horse, tethering the animal to a tomato plant, and came towards them, running a sunburned hand through his tall, dark, and waving hair. The girl felt strangely drawn to him. Perhaps it was the magnet: he wore one on a string around his neck, and she carried a matching one in her purse. He came within easy talking distance, and stood still: sunburned hand in mid-hair.

He opened his mouth and evicted a rich, slow voice: "Why are you looking at me?"

They blinked. They suddenly felt at a loss for words. Why were they looking at this man? Perhaps it had something to do with the formative years of childhood... associations made in the cradle. Who can tell why we do what we do? They stood, open-mouthed, staring into the fathomless mysteries of the mouth of the other man. At last, our Hero's jaw creaked. He opened it a little wider, and tentatively uttered: "Ah... brothah Rip?"

The dark stranger turned on him a lazy eye. Then, slightly, the eye widened. "Snort, is that you?"

Chapter One: In Which Something Happens, Not What You Expect

To begin with: our Hero, a man of action, elected to be our hero upon a platform of action, immediately upon taking up office in this story, ventured forth into the streets of the town. It was summer. He had a vague idea of going somewhere, but his main thoughts at the time were pure from all such worldly concerns. They sat in an ethereal congregation at the back of his mind, looking out of his ears.

The young man wandered the High Street in a gallant attempt to entertain or even to edify them. He made his way into shops, out of shops, under clotheslines and through swinging doors. And slowly the congregation of his thoughts fell silent, yawned, and one by one either dozed off, or got up and wandered out.

Just when it seemed that he, too, should either doze off or wander out, something happened. There was a delicate screech right beside his ear, and in the confusion that followed as his thoughts tumbled together and woke up, there were several more. "Oh, ouwch! ouwch! ouwch! oh!" His thoughts reassembled rubbing their eyes, and he realised that underneath his left foot lay the tender, crushed pod of a young woman.

"Ah," he intoned, in a deep, drawling voice. "Ah see Ah am standin' on your foot."

"YES!" screeched the voice, rather indelicately now. "Would you please get off it!"

"Mah dear lady," he said, "With pleasure." He was a true Southern gentleman: if a woman requested him to remove himself from her appendage, he was certainly not going to cavil at doing so. He flourished his hat, smiting her lightly in the ribcage, and withdrew his foot from his neighbor's foot. There was a small cry of relief as she crumpled to the earth.

"Mah dear," the Southern gentleman continued, "Ah believe you have dropped your little lace hanky."

The female uttered something under her breath, and turned to retrieve it. But the Southern gentleman was one step ahead of her, and a foot above: He reached over to get it, and as if by magic, the movement evoked another series of short shrieks. He was not to be deterred: He valiantly assailed the little lace hanky and fetched it up under the lady's floundering nose. "Do not weep, Madame: Ah have retreived the object."

The woman's face had taken on a purple strain: he supposed her to be almost hysterical with grief over the loss of the little lace hanky. His impression was soon corrected when she gave a strangled wail that decipherably expressed, "But you're-griiinding-your-heel-into-My-Haaand!"

"Ah." Said he. His features remained impassive: he was always dead calm in a crisis, whenever else he was also, dead calm. "Ah. Ah will remove it at once." He did so, in the most punctilious way. But it soon became apparent to even the most casual observer who had by now gathered round that he was injured: He had the air of one who bore a silent wound. The young lady had not received his attentions with the proper self-depricating air: it was evident that she did not value them; and he was inclined to leave her to the ministratons of the madding crowd. He turned to go: but just then, his eardrum was once more assaulted with sudden sound, this time of the essence of barbed wire. It spoke and said, "Not so fast, young man."

The young man felt it would be wiser not to, so fast or otherwise.

Dear Reader,

I am a dog.

It would perhaps be helpful to remind everyone what a dog is. It is an animal that barks, runs, and licks faces.

We know this, by infallible presuppositions. Yet when it comes to bringing the dog into your heart and home, for your own enjoyment, what do you do? You muzzle him, spank him for barking, tie him up, and make him get down when he wants to lick people's faces. And when he does none of these things he was made to do, you congratulate him and say, 'Good dog.'

But these are not actions of a 'good dog' at all. They are the actions of a sub-dog, a dog who is not enjoying himself like a dog, a dog who is a waste product of the human.

Last night I heard the female in hysterics at one o'clock after the seventh assay into the night to make me stop barking. It is Odin's daughter she is worried about: Odin's daughter was made to sleep at night, to be a 'good girl'. So in fact was she, though she has forgotten this since she came here. But I was made to bark. And run around. And lick faces.

Humans ought to remember these things before they get dogs, was what the female said. And in all fairness, she did not get me. She had me foisted upon her by the former owner, who has not given me a bath in over a year. She also had foisted upon her a cake of soap.

So they are going to get me a muzzle, and give me a bath. This forces me to retaliate with some shocking news about the male.

His hair is fake.

Iranians love Danish pastries, but when they look for the flaky dessert at the bakery they now have to ask for "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad." Bakeries across the capital were covering up their ads for Danish pastries Thursday after the confectioners' union ordered the name change in retaliation for caricatures of the Muslim prophet published in a Danish newspaper. "Given the insults by Danish newspapers against the prophet, as of now the name of Danish pastries will give way to 'Rose of Muhammad' pastries," the union said in its order.

"This is a punishment for those who started misusing freedom of expression to insult the sanctities of Islam," said Ahmad Mahmoudi, a cake shop owner in northern Tehran.

It is much more significant than the female’s productions, which mostly consist of killing insects to the shrieking crescendo of ‘Kyrie Eleison’. The first act sets up the characters, the second act develops the plot, and the third act breaks out into abstract meter as the play evaporates from solid simplicity into a gaseous complexity.

The play is dedicated not only to the male and female, but also to the ‘Reformed Faith and Worship’ email list group, especially messages #7295 -7457 (with some exceptions, including but not limited to the first, the last and message 7393), which produced this statement:

I believe that agreement with the doctrines of the original Westminster Confession of Faith should be required of all elders and communicant members of the church.... I believe that anyone who unrepentantly and publicly disagrees with any of the doctrines of the original Westminster Confession of Faith, including implications of it like prohibition on use of Sabbath public transportation, should be barred from church office and communion, until such time as the person repents.

These people need to write a study Bible.

Barren Chairs: or The Repenting of Mr. and Mrs. R. Zartman

Characters:

RUBEN, a slightly balding man with a paunch HEIDI, a haggard woman in ratty houseshoes ZACK, a tall, dark, and handsome dog with shoulder muscles that ripple when he moves ZACK’s pastor, who parted ways with his former presbytery over a conjunction: is now a member of a single email list group, from which he is about to separate.

CURTAIN rises upon ZACK, vigilantly patrolling the front of the house, ever watchful for RUBEN and HEIDI’s safety.

RUBEN enters, carrying a large STICK, staggering to one side, his speech slightly slurred:

RUBEN: Zack, I can’t stand you WACK WACK –

(I forgot to mention that this play contains realistic portrayals of violence which might not be appropriate for young children)

Goes INSIDE

Voice of HEIDI, sounding from INSIDE like the death throes of an infirm horse: HAUUUUGHHHH HAUUUUUUGH. I love it when you hit the dog. Maybe he’ll die. HAUUUUUUGH HAUUUUUUUUUGH HAAUUUUUUUUGH.

Enter, ZACK’s pastor, carrying the WESTMINSTER CONFESSION:

ZACK’s pastor: In order to retain the purity of the church, builded together as an holy temple, established at Westminster, and to uphold the final nature of the Standards, I am the sole communicating member of the universal body. EXIT

Act 2

Zack is diligently patrolling the house, with a slight limp. He struggles manfully to uphold the security of

RUBEN and HEIDI.

Enter RUBEN, with the WESTMINSTER CONFESSION.

RUBEN: (beats his chest with the booklet) Ah me, ah me. I see now I had no authority to judge the matter! I ought not to have acted, before I brought my charges before the session. Moreover at the time of beating Zack I thought I was a member of (presbyterian denomination), but have since been informed my membership expired at 2:17 AM the previous morning, before I had time to renew my vows. Therefore I was not even acting as a representative of (presbyterian denomination), but merely as a private individual.

HEIDI, appears in ratty houseshoes, inserting her TEETH: Oh ZACK! I too repent. I have no liberty to impersonate a sick horse. If we are not to take God’s name in vain then how much more should we exercise restraint to-wards the animals, who served the writers of the Westminster Confession! I was abusing my legitimate sense of humor, laughing at Ruben’s jokes: a sense of humor is a gift of God, but being funny is a sin: Zack, do forgive me.

ZACK: The sorrow you express for your iniquity rejoices my heart. Your abject state of humbled to the dust repentance does not fall on deafened ears. We are instructed when a brother or sister repents of grievous error graciously to condescend, and overlook the matter. Therefore be assured that I will no longer remember the vicious way in which you assaulted me, striking my body with a stick, striking repeatedly and bruising my lower end: I will not call to mind the gross intoxicated state in which you lashed out at my righteous self: I will forbear to mention the heinous sounds that proceeded from your vile mouths, and the slanderous lies you, with the poison of asps upon your lips, spread about me to the people on this blog.

Act 3

RUBEN and HEIDI: But we did not repent of our slanderous lies.

We are not competent to judge if we have sinned in that:

that is a matter for the general assembly.

ZACK’s pastor: The Confession ought to be adhered to rigidly in all its processes and due and necessary consequences as the express intention of the Scriptures, with which no child of God can disagree and not make shipwreck of the faith:

but the considered judgments of (presbyterian denomination) ought not be taken with too great authority.

The one true church of Lesser 10B Camino Maninal will decide, according to its strict confessional status, whereby it is in fellowship with no one, if you have sinned.

I am that one true church.

Repent or be anathema!

RUBEN and HEIDI: (bewildered) but Zack said he would never mention it again.

ZACK’s pastor: You publicly oppose yourselves to demonstrated due and necessary logic of doctrines of the Westminster Confession?

You will receive a letter stating that you have been disciplined in a closed meeting of my session.

You have effectively been cut off from the body.

Of which you never were a part,

not being members of my church

which only is confessional.

RUBEN, HEIDI, ZACK, and ZACK’s pastor: We confess that we are not worthy

Not worthy to impugn the all-sufficiency

Or to insert a jot or change a tittle

Of any work of the Westminster General Assembly:

For they were given to the thorough furnishing of every worthy work.

ZACK’s pastor: As it is written, though I should speak with tongues of men and angels and have not full and public testimony to the inerrancy of every point of the Confession, I am nothing.

Ruben staggers off to the RIGHT, and Heidi shuffles off LEFT in her houseshoes, proving that their repentance was temporary and false (the wicked are like chaff which the wind driveth away), which ZACK suspected all along, though he graciously forgave them (the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance).

CURTAIN