The Brilliantly Rainbowed Adventure

        It was almost three o'clock before we found their trail. They would be easy to follow; the monstrous mother gator had left a trail as big as a slop trough. Billy's face grew pale as he considered the significance of the deep footprints in the black muck.
        "Sha-no-she-ba," he murmured softly under his breath, and then he found his voice. "This is no ordinary alligator," he told us, using slow, measured syllables. He gave me a knowing glance.
        This was serious business. I had heard many times of the terror that had been caused in this part of Florida by the depredations of the great alligator Sha-no-she-ba. I had trembled around campfires while hearing tales of the dreaded reptile ever since I was a little boy. The legendary alligator was reckoned to be big medicine by some of the native Floridians hereabouts, and as a result they had given her the name of Sha-no-she-ba: Two-Toes the Destroyer. This gator was none other than Old Two-Toes herself.
        "Let's go," said Billy. We began to follow the slimy rut of her fresh gator trail.
        An hour later we came to the foot of the hill from which Frogstick had first sighted this pack of gators that was so relentlessly following his trail. We followed the tracks until it was dusk, heading deep into the primeval forest. Then we stopped to consider our options.
        "It's obvious that he's leading them away from our camp," ventured Egghead, "I think that we should stay here for the night." Billy gestured towards the east.
        "We're only about two miles from the new Nowhere County Wilderness Area Campground and Theater," he said, "I suggest that we spend the night there. We can put out word about Frogstick and stock up on supplies." We were all surprised at this much-welcomed piece of information.
        "Lead on," I said, and so he did.
        We arrived at the campground after dark. To our considerable astonishment we found it jam-packed with beautiful (or at least reasonably presentable) people and their automobiles. Shiny Cadillacs, Mercedes Benzes, and BMWs were packed together like sardine cans, littering the pavement with row after boring row of polished chrome and steel. Well-dressed citizens hurried from their cars and busily bustled toward a brightly-lit theater building that was perched like an bloated rectangular spider atop a grassy knoll on the northern side of the camp grounds.
        This unexpected twist of events gave us much tasty food for thought, and we ruminated reflectively upon the possible permutations of pertinacious perspicacity that might pertain perchance to the appearance of this perplexing plopful of popular people. As we mused thusly and walked across the parking lot, a coarse yell split our meditations asunder.
        "Hey rubes!" a deep voice bellowed. We looked around and beheld a beefy security guard hustling up to us. He was armed.
        "Where are your tickets?" he demanded angrily. Old Slug gaped at him stupidly, then swallowed nervously with a sound that resembled a golf ball being sucked down the pipe of a vacuum cleaner. Egghead pushed his glasses up from where they had slid down his nose and squinted wonderingly at the guard. I eyeballed him.
        Billy stared. Stink stunk.
        "Dig it, baby," rapped Zeb, "blue moods and blue garb clash like bull elks locking horns in the valleys of thought, between the mountains of your mind. Chill out into a loosely goosey pile of downy pillow-soft pastels and free the locked-tight engines of your inner crash-pad. Beach clothes and happy thoughts are the doctor Zeb's prescription, tried and true advice to make you a free-wheeling and rollicking flipster, words written upon the scrip of peace and groovy love."
        "Oh, a wise guy, huh?" boomed the irate gunman. His veins, which were busily bulging out of the sides of his swollen neck, were as thick as pickled sausages. As a matter of fact, they looked exactly like pickled sausages: crimson and mottled and as ugly as a buzzard's wattle.
        "What's going on here tonight?" I asked the man.
        "This is a big charity affair, sport," he told me, "the Anaroyal American Trembling-Lance Company is presenting a play by the Meister himself." He preened like an obese peacock, acting as though he were somehow responsible for the presentation of this play, which would obviously enlighten and enrich playgoer and security guard alike with its tastefully manufactured magniloquence.
        "Which play?" asked Billy.
        "How would you know the difference?" asked the guard in his thick Yonkers accent. He leered at us and guffawed derisively. "You stupid rednecks don't ever read that highbrow stuff."
        Since we were the only rednecks around there, he must have been talking about us.
        "Au contraire, my dear unenlightened one," said my pal Egghead, "we happen to have arrived at your provincial affair in the company of the Genius of the Ink Bottle: the Meister himself." He paused, waiting while the suspense built in the guard's partly cloudy mind: until the exact instant when the momentously pretentious moment was about to deliver the baby that it was carrying.
        At this key turning-point Billy stepped forward and drew himself up to his full six-foot-two-inch height.
        "I, sir, am William Trembling-Lance," he intoned dramatically, his voice ringing out as clearly and as powerfully as a massive brass bell, wafting sonorously into the clear autumn air like an auditory power surge from the brain of a chimp.
        At this exact moment, a real power surge caused the lights in the parking lot to shine more brightly. The very breeze seemed to pause as if it waited anxiously to hear the next sounds from the mouth of the world's most famous wordmonger.
        The guard stepped backwards and his jaw flopped open. Fear showed in his eyes. Seizing the moment, I boldly steeped forward.
        "And I, Monsieur, am Hootenanny B. Hootenanny, the leader of the world-famous Hootenannies, the biggest gorillas in the country-western jungle."
        "I'm Slug," said Slug.
        "Egghead Zenaborkowitz," said Egghead.
        "Mama called me Zeb," said Zeb.
        Now Stink stepped out from behind us. The guard's eyes widened as he beheld Stink's mud-encrusted form.
        "Stink's the name," our pal declared confidently, "heavy country metal's the game." As he finished speaking a sudden gust of wind hit him from behind, and we were all rocked by a hideous reeking stench that smacked us in the face like a blast from a furnace filled with rotten things that were probably killed on a highway somewhere.
        "Aaaaagh!" we cried, flinging up our hands and running for our lives.
        "Stop, or I'll shoot!" choked the guard. We stopped.
        The wind shifted again, dissipating the poisonous fumes. The guard was coughing into a handkerchief while his trembling hand nervously waved a large gun in our direction.
        He was as pale as a haint; the gun swung back and forth in his shaking hands. To tell you the truth, the guy looked downright scary... as if he had been bled by leeches. The old boy was plumb cave-frog white.
        At this unusual conjunction of the time-space continuum, we were suddenly relieved right there on the asphalt by the sight of an fancy car driving up. An elegantly dressed man leaned out of the window.
        "What's going on here?" he inquired sternly.
        "These guys are Looney Tunes, Mr. Chadwick!" the guard gasped, "They must have broken out of the Nowhere County Nuthouse!" He gestured wildly in our direction. "That big Indian over there claims he's William Trembling-Lance."
        Billy was standing behind us in the shadows at the edge of the parking lot.
        "Who are you, sir?" demanded Mr. Chadwick. Billy strode dramatically forward into a pool of shimmering illumination that was shining down from a streetlamp. The light dramatically highlighted his high cheekbones, his hooked beak of a nose, his straight black hair. His shiny forehead glistened mysteriously, hinting of the storehouse of power and treasure contained therein.
        "I sir, am William Trembling-Lance." he grandly began.

Away from this boorish brood of clowns I am known
By names that flatter and conflate.
I have been lauded with such praise as is
Heaped upon few men.
Such honors pump hot vanity into the souls of those
Unsettled in the knowledge of the petty weight
Of grand titles and honorifics.
Praise can be toxic when eaten without salt.

Many who are lauded with the praise of mankind
Become puffed up with visions of their omniscience
Until bursting the bounds of sound discretion,
They leap with pride up fast-flowing streams
Of unseemly self-love and earthly glory.
At the end, they gasp out their vanity,
Coughing up pride like dying salmons
Seeping froth upon the sun-baked shores of life:
Defanged, denuded, despairing of hope
Until they fade away.

        A hush fell over the audience. The silence was at once profound and portentous, caryying in it the sense of a hidden majesty about to unleash an awesome radiant power. Then I heard softly whispered words that slipped from the lips of the dumfounded guard. Like obedient zombies, the others joined in as if they were reciting a cultural litany that should be chanted with reverence and awe.
        "The Meister," he croaked, realizing in a sickening flash the depths of his folly.
        "The Beard," breathed Chadwick, squeaking like a rubber duck crushed beneath a Cossacks heel.
        "The Great One," groaned Stink, carried away with the immanent gorgeousity of this exquisitely tailored instant in time.
        "The Grand Exacerbater," squealed O'Flannery.
        "Mr. It," cried Egghead mischievously, hoping to stir things up even more.
        "The Toast of Timbuktu," I found myself yelling, not exactly knowing what I meant or where I had heard the words before.
        "Big 'Un," booped Slug.
        "Marlowe's Bane," Stink shrieked.
        "Wordbender!" shouted Mr. Chadwick.
        "Dreamweaver!" gasped the guard.
        "Mr. Moose!" rapped Zeb dreamily.
        "That's Mr. Muse, you citroen-headed hick!" I wailed, awash in despair. I was surrounded by nitwits, and I was one of them, myself!
        "Silence." said Billy, and we waited in awestruck wonder. What secret was he about to unveil, what mysteries would he unfold before our greedy eyes?
        Suddenly it was as if the universe had split and revealed the nut in the heart of the fruit.
        Tiny flashing strobe lights were swirling around us like clouds of dancing, wind-driven sparks. "Where did the lights come from?" I found myself wondering idly, too deeply amazed to consider the significance of the events that had by now seized us by the throat and were preparing to pummel us between the eyes with uninvited profundity. The moon came out from behind its refuge-cloud and brightly poured a mysterious liquid luminescence upon the weary earth, causing us to marvel at the magnificent natural beauty of this night, this man, this fallow mind, this hairy island of humanity called.... The Native Wit!
        Then, Stink revealed the reason for the swirling lights and punctured the ballooning moment with his own pin head.
        "Confounded lightning-bugs," frapped old Stinkeroo, breaking the tension into flinders. The spell was broken completely as we laughed and hee-hawed out loud in the cool autumn air. And as we laughed, Mr. Chadwick realized what had happened. His inept security man had actually held the honoree of the night's big bash at gunpoint! What a calamity!
        Chadwick slapped his forehead in anguish.
        "Mr. Trembling-Lance," he said, regaining his composure, "I had no idea that you were planning to honor us with an appearance tonight." He was utterly befuddled as his eyes sipped in the intoxicating sight of this eon's most famous playwright.
        "Mr. Trembling-Lance," he gargled, "please accept my profoundest apologies." He was as pale as a bed sheet. "I hope that you will allow me to recompense you for any incivilities that you may have suffered at the hands of Private O"Flannery." The security guard looked as if he had been pole-axed when he heard these words.
        "Sir, that's Sergeant O"Flannery," the beefy bully drizzled, acting like a sleepwalker who wants to wake up.
        "Private O'Flannery," shot back Chadwick with a voice like a band saw.
        It looked like poor old Private O'Flappigan was quite a bit unhinged by all of the hub-bub; I figured that maybe he didn't get out much. "And put that gun away!" roared Mr. Chadwick.
        At this point, Chadwick's expression changed and he sniffed the air suspiciously. "What is that hideous aroma?" he asked, as if to himself. His eyeballs flopped over to Stink, who smiled and waved at him.
        "Mr. Trembling-Lance," Chadwick begged, manfully ignoring Old Stinkweed, "what may I do to make amends to you for this gross indignity?" Billy smiled as he replied.

Only grant me this kindness
And my sorely defamed countenance shall rest
In careless ease.
Let this gun-slinging ruffian earn his pay
Before the yawning earth cannot abide Stink's scent,
And, gulping graciously, swallows the pill.

Let this gunman lead our reeking friend
To clean, hot showers, and there abide
Until Stink's deadly fumes abate.
May his passing minutes seem like hours
Giving birth to endless years
And may those years, like a strangling fig,
Teach the man what he should have known:
How not to play with loaded guns.

        "It is as you wish," said Chadwick, "O'Flannery, take this... er... Mr. Stink... to the showers and stay there until he has finished bathing." The guard gulped loudly in the gloaming gloom.
        "You'd better take his gun," I suggested. "There's only so much a man can bear."