pete clark, a barbarian who had never been young, scanned the crowd looking for a victim.
out of the corner of his eye he saw daisy wilson, a grandmother from the depths of miles away.
under the periphery of the universe that specialized in jokes, he just could not forbear envisioning her obsolescence.
quietly - pete was always the quiet type - he held a meeting in his head with his loyal underdemons of terror.
pete wsasunaware that officer quiglet was expectantly following his every kinesis.
you do not even know what kinesis means, king john, his number one demon, whispered in his cranium.
do so, pete thought back explosively.
suffer the lost ladies, king john replied evasively.
all - all - all -the word, and the world, tumbled through pete’s imploding edification.
pete and king john and officer quiglet went back a long way.
but daisy was something new - or was she?
is anything, or anybody, really new?
a nightingale descended on daisy’s shoulder.
suddenly pete remembered a joke his grandfather had told him - the first joke he had ever heard.
it was a revelation - before that he had never known what a jpke was.
an apple was walking own the road, looking for a new hat.
but the road was empty, except for an undertaker in a black coat, leading a giraffe on a long leash.
with a leash that long, you might as well let the poor beast run wild, the apple said to the undertaker.
there might be some truth to that, the undertaker readily agreed.
the undertaker let the giraffe go and it ran off over the hills.
the apple and the undertaker were left alone with what was left of the joke.
pete woke up.
daisy was gone.
she had gone to alaska with officer quiglet and the undertaker to find the giraffe, who was wanted for murder in the first degree.
they had left pete behind as there was no room for him in the limousine.
but had they really gone to alaska?
maybe they had gone to zanzibar instead.
the road stretched out before poor pete.
i need an infusion of reality, he thought.
before the highway patrol comes along.
the rhinoceros is the most dangerous animal in africa,
at least it was when the world was young.
save it for the judge.
there will be a hot time in the old town tonight.
for the oranges, not for the apples.
