"FIVE BICYCLES," by Joe Starck
AFTER HE ADJUSTED HIS SADDLE A HALF MILLIMETER UP AND one millimeter forward, Buzzy Crumhunger rode his bicycle out to Token Creek, where, in the slow shallow inlets, he netted about a quart of young tadpoles.
When he got back to his apartment, near downtown Madison, he got some butter and garlic going in a pan to saute, added the extensive list of secret ingredients, and then, slid the wrigglers in.
He unfolded a one-foot-square sheet of cheesecloth onto the kitchen countertop, dialed his timer for the usual eight minutes, and walked to the back door to set it ajar.
He went into the living room, removed his shirt, and settled into a recliner. He felt his newly-clipped chest and belly hair, from central member to sternum and back, and wondered if he should go with Honjo hammered or nonmetallic fenders. He picked up his notepad to pencil in some ideas that came to him during his ride, fleshing out his social psychology doctoral dissertation on the psychodevelopmental effects of art and craft on individuals and groups of individuals, in a paper comprising a two-part divide within a divide, tentatively titled, "Meditative Prose for Framing and Building the Psyche," in which he intends to catalogue these effects differing disjunctive art/craft objects from the more homogenized art/craft objects perceived by individuals and groups of individuals from the period 1979 to 2002, with an introduction defining the broad spectrum of art from craft, with examples, by unifying his four prior works comparing Georgia O'Keefe to The Great Barrier Reef, Carole King to Eminem, the influence of Phillipe Starck on every small town's fireman's park, and whole milk to its lesser ilk.
The timer chimed and Buzzy popped up from his recliner to check on his cooking.
The pan beheld the same results -- tails, nothing but tiny snippets of tails -- and again, the glaze of garlic-butter tracks on the stove and countertop, across the kitchen floor and out the back door.
He recorded his results with a round of photos and the usual pertinent notations in his binder, for it is Buzzy's scholarly intention to rebuke Harold Hill's seminal and still preeminent work in evolutionary biology, "From Goo To You By Way Of The Zoo." Buzzy contends, as a result from his in-kitchen experiments, and in a 73.5 degree departure from Hill's ancient assertions, that cataclysmic events throughout history really did, in fact, speed up the adaptive evolutionary process of certain species. Buzzy aims to prove that one particular swimming species urgently adapted to land as the direct result of the over-warming of shallow seas due to the flow into these waters of volcanic lava.
Parched and willed to crawl out of the burbling, torrid waters onto cooler tracts of land, this species decided he liked his new talent, and henceforth crawled and crawled, from generation to generation, across deserts and gardens, up and down mounts, through locusts and maggots, flies and hail, by crosses and Torah pointers, Ouch!, and finally to the present time the species settled at a place a stone's throw from Lake Monona, where he could jump in if he wanted to, having never forgotten how to swim, but has grown accustomed to an anatomical position of comfort and style on his pristine, blue, vintage Trek bicycle.
Buzzy scooped the buttery batch of tails and garlic onto the square of cheesecloth, wrung the viscous liquid from the mash into a paper cup, and then poured the liquid into a small squirt bottle. He then propped his bicycle onto his home mechanic's repair stand, directed the squirt bottle towards the links of his chain in motion, and lubed 'er up good.
He pedaled down to McDonald's, silently shifting through the gears all the way there with nary a croak, and had himself a fish sandwich, fries, dessert, and a big coke. He paged through "The Onion" as he ate, paused at his favorite column, "savage love," and then spooned the hot-fudge sundae with nuts. He finished and went outside to his bicycle where he found a sight that shuddered his soul from his skin and froze him solid. Perched everywhere on his blue Trek bicycle were a multitude of ultra-frog-like creatures with big, bulbous, orbital eyes agaze at HIM. Having never before been the object of so many yellow-moon peepers of intensity, he almost shrilled "What?", but was too frightened of what then might happen, and instead managed to twist his rigid body to the left, in three jerks of acute angles, stepped quickly away, out of sight, around the corner of the building, and with his back against the brick wall, he slid down to the concrete below to think about the wild, weird, yet to Buzzy's ever-metamorphosing mind, altogether wonderful wwwrogs.
With his decision made, Buzzy re-approached his bike, and was stunned to see that the wwwrogs had seated themselves, close together, echelon style, on the top and bottom tubes only, of his bicycle's frame. Of like minds, Buzzy and his passengers set out atogether, back to Token Creek -- all eyes avast.
Buzzy rode the time-trial of his life, with an intrepid reserve of Lance-like intensity, endurance, and resolve, and with certainty intact, all the while there, back to the homeland of the wwwrogs.
Upon crossing the rural finish line separating asphalt from field, he zipped down the gravel shoulder of the road, pushed the pedals hard the remaining seventy-five yards, dismounted, and leaned his bike against a tree, near the bank of the creek. He waited, expectantly. The wwwrogs didn't move.
He walked back to the road to light a cigarette. When he finished, he lit another. He returned to his bike. They hadn't moved, still again. "Well, OK then, sink or swim," were the last words Buzzy said to the wwwrogs.
Buzzy's steps crunched the gravel along the edge of the county road as he walked. He lit a third cigarette and whispered, "They looked like they needed it more than I did tonight. Some kid'll drag it out of the water tomorrow. I hope he grows onto it."
"And?"
Buzzy looked deep down both ways of the midnight road before crossing.
"And I won't cook again."
Buzzy's shadow, cast by the moon, was all he needed to keep him company for the long walk home -- but he had more. He had almost a full pack of Sedona cigarettes. He had nature's scents, sights, and sounds, from toes to stars, from road to field. He had the comfort of the intimate summer air. And he had the casual bellows of large trucks, shifting through their gears, somewhere outer there.
Several hours later, nearer to Madison, he could make out the lit dome of his state's Capitol, and his fortitude doubled, for as with the moon this new beacon of light led his way.
More hours passed, and Buzzy's trek finally came to an end, in sight of the Capitol square, and although he was just about near his home, he climbed up the steps to the base of the building and sat himself down, exhausted, on a seat of quarried, polished stone.
Drained and dazed, he was, now. His mind wandered into a spin of reverie: "Veni, vini, vici." But what of the other J.C.? As he, Buzzy wept. What would his legacy be? Of which J.C. would he be? Maybe the two into one, yes, yes, that would be be, the great Buzzy C! Buzzy envisioned the Madison legislators, at his feet:
"Behold! Learn to converse in extralinear verse!
What ABOUT a coffee shop called 'The Zygote?' What ABOUT an all-girl band called 'Nately's Whore?' What ABOUT a bicycle colored Female Cardinal, with Male Cardinal trim, both on badge? What ABOUT birds of a feather?"
The rising sun burned Buzzy's tired eyes and he closed his lids for a spell. A bus passed by. And then a Harley. And then the usual cars. "Silence is the role of bicycles," he breathed deeply, in and out, to the imaginary men and women, as they returned to their posts of the day, and pondered throughout, Buzzy's edicts to learn, ABOUT.
When Buzzy opened his eyes, the forum was clear, and he noticed a woman, coming his way. He watched her come nearer until she was within forty feet, a distance which beset his chi to flow, his passion to perk, and his toes to tap inside his white Nike sneakers, for he could clearly see she was the Mediterranean beauty he'd seen, of another day. At twenty feet, dual scents circled the air, and Buzzy knew that she knew what he was doing, and she knew that he knew what she was doing. At eight feet Buzzy silently intoned to her, "Come on, give me your eyes."
And in the next moment of two steps of her sultry stride, she turned and granted Buzzy's wish with a deep flash of her enchanting orbs of white circling gold circling black.
And then it happened, out of the black -- magical sparkling red stars appeared and danced before her eyes.
Buzzy closed his eyelids and surrendered some of his most powerful neurons to the red sparkles. Two by two he paired off his knightly neurons with her dancing stars and allowed the new couples private places in his brain to bed.
Buzzy opened his eyes, stretched real good and long, and sat up from his bench to the new morn.'
He tugged at his Michael Jordan Jockey briefs 'neath his jeans, stepped into a bookstore for the latest copy of Al-Jumuah, bought a box of Nat Shermans, and headed down State Street to the nearest cafe.
Along the way he caught a glimmer of, stopped, backed up, and looked at what appeared to be a mid' to late 80s Masi Gran Criterium bicycle hanging in the window of the Yellow Jersey bicycle store, for sale.