The Brilliantly Rainbowed Adventure

- Chapter 33 -
The Old Coot

        On the previous day, as we Hootenannies had been headed for our fabulous chuck wagon dinner, Frogstick had been bumping along on the hard front seat of the old Model T. An occasional dip in the overgrown logging road jarred his teeth as they wound slowly through the dense oak forest.
        The old man quietly hummed the theme to "2001: A Space Odyssey", absorbed in his driving, his aged eyes scanning the forest and trail ahead. Frogstick, on his part, sat stupefied, wondering at this strange new turn of events.
        Who was this ancient fellow? Why had he referred to himself as Frogstick's pa? Was he dealing from a full pack of playing cards, or was he a cruel joker who was one flashy suit short of a full deck? Why would anyone be driving a Model T in the twenty-first century, and whatever happened to Ewell Gibbons? These and other vitally important questions gnawed upon Frogstick's mind like a pack of ravenous Peekapoos. He was exhausted and dehydrated, and he still could not think clearly. Of course, that was nothing new.
        Frogstick had been raised by his mama and her parents, and they had always been silent on the subject of his paternity. The folks in town who were old enough to have known anything had likewise been evasive. They acted embarrassed if the subject were broached, as if they knew a shameful secret they were loathe to share. The Frogger had eventually let the matter drop, whereupon it had risen and stood in the corner of his mind like an uninvited guest waiting to swoop up the finger food. It was always there somewhere, prowling suspiciously, just sort of loitering in the shadows without any I.D.
        With the background that he had, its easy to see how Frogstick was a mite perturbed. The jalopy relentlessly wheezed along, sending the old Drum-Bell jouncing and bouncing down the narrow lane with this man who claimed to be his father. Needless to say, Frogstick's curiosity was piqued: his interest ramped up to a feverish pitch; it was all set to take a lickety-split toboggan ride down his densely-packed noggin and to go airborne through the chute of his mouth.
        "Who are you, mister?" Frogstick finally blurted.
        "I'm yer pa, boy," the man replied, giving old Frogstick an affectionate look. "I was wondering when you'd find me."
        "Look here, now," said 'Stick, "if you're my pa, how am I supposed to know it?"
        "Why I just am, that's all," said the old-timer, "I reckon it will take you some time to believe it. I never meant to forsake you or your ma, boy, but something bad happened years ago, and I lost my memory. I was one of those animal-nesiacs for several years. By the time my memory came back, you was all growed up, and your ma was moved to Tuscaloosa, and I reckoned that you didn't need any more trouble in your lives. I figured that it was better if I let you be."
        "Who are you?" demanded 'Stick.
        "I'm Hermit Guchins," he said, "and you're not." Well, sir, at this point old Frogstick just stared at the old man, too numb to ring up an expression on his facial register.
        "It was quite a journey the day that I disappeared," the old-timer continued, "I regained consciousness over Lake Wannabe. My altitude must have been about two thousand feet, holding steady, and I could make out my shadow there below me, just a dot a-creepin' across the waves that looked like shiny little ripples, I was up so high. I was mighty glad to see water below me, though, even if I was stuck in the middle of Nowhere. It looked like I was in a peck of trouble, and right then and there I could see that I obviously had passed out after drinkin' too many Fizzies.
        I'd heard tell of such things, and now I was a-soarin' up there like a bloated kite, a-flyin' the living proof. Well sir, I was able right away to release some of the gas pressure, which dropped me about fifteen-hundred feet. I did the same thing over, again and again, a-ventin' my way towards the lake, until I kissed down on a sandy beach there just as soft as you please. I still had most of my wits, or at least I seemed to, but I couldn't remember who I was, or even where I'd come from."
        Frogstick wasn't absorbing all of this input easily. He shook his head and looked at his feet. His hands nervously pulled and twisted one another as the jalopy jolted down the rutted logging road.
        "First the gators," he murmured to himself, "then the hogs," his eyes began to blur, "now this." He turned to the old man. "I was makin' out pretty good on my own!" he cried. His face was wet with tears, his mouth wrenched askew by his grief. "If you're my pa, why didn't you come for me?" he asked, with tears cascading down his cheeks.
        The old man pulled his car off of the road and into a worn out space beside the logging trail. His voice quavered strangely as he spoke. "I...I...I thought I was doing the right thing. I still love you, boy," he rasped, his rheumy old eyes fogging up in their sockets. An errant tear sprung out of this corner of his peeper and borbled down the length of his cracked brown face, eventually wandering into his wooly beardish bib and getting lost in the crowd. It was a stoic face, one minted in the days before the jet age, and years of suffering had stamped upon it an indelible expression of knowing compassion.
        "I just couldn't come home, I figgered," he reiterated, "it had been fifteen years by the time I got back my memory, and you was growed, and I thought that both you and your ma would be better off without me." He paused. "I was wrong," he added, "I kin see it now." His aged voice cracked and trembled.
        Frogstick looked at Hermit Gutchins, and for the first time he noticed the frailty of this ancient gentleman who sat beside him. He was as skinny as a haint, and his knotted and liver-spotted hands vibrated ever-so-slightly, evincing the physical weakness of the man as he clutched the wheel. Hermit's eyes, however, told a different story altogether. They radiated strength and assurance, shining like whetted lasers in the dim light of the shaded glen.
        Suddenly Frogstick sat up. He shook his head and wiped his hands over his face, then took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
        "That's all right," he said, "I believe you." He looked over at Hermit and smiled. His face was still wet. "Don't worry about it." Frogstick was, after all, made of pretty tough stuff. Old Hermit grinned admiringly at Frogstick.
        "I'm mighty proud of you, boy," he said. He smiled and shook his head. "You've growed into quite a man, and I reckon I don't deserve no credit, but I'm proud fer ye, anyhow." He opened the door of his old Model T and slapped old 'Stick on his knobby old knee. "Let's eat, boy!" he spouted, and with that he gimped on out into the forest. Frogstick followed his lead, and pretty soon they were walking out of the oak hammock and into a great open field. A barn stood at one end of the field, and an old-style wooden ranch house, obviously built quite some time ago, sat on the other end.
        "This is yours?" asked 'Stick.
        "I reckon," said Hermit Gutchins, "or at least for this life it is, anyhow." Frogstick looked it up and down.
        "This is the old Whopping Big C place, isn't it?" This storied headquarters of the Wheeler clan and the Whooping Big C spread figured prominently in the history of the area.
        "Yep," said Hermit, "I picked it up quite a few years back. Bought it from old Fenton Wheeler hisself, back before the Conglomerate grabbed most of this-here land." Frogstick stopped at the front gate and studied the sign that was nailed, western style, across the top of the two tall gateposts. The sign read "The Coot's Nest".
        "That was a little joke of mine," chuckled Hermit, "the folks here-abouts have taken to callin' me the Old Coot." Frogstick was beginning to understand some of the reasons for the Old Coot's new identity. Hermit had lost his memory and made a new life, and now he had seen no reason to reenter his family's life, to possibly upset them further with the reintroduction of a new Hermit Gutchins, a "Hermit Gutchins as Old Man" who might fall far short of their hopes and expectations. They trudged up to Hermit's house together.
        Later that evening, ensconced in the roomy wooden house and seated at a shiny hickory table in front of a roaring fireplace, Hermit and Froggy pigged out on a whole slew of audaciously delicious vittles. I won't bore you with the foodsome details, but the truth is that they ate a regular raft of gizzards and fritters and fatback and corn dodgers and turnips and the like; after which they pulled out huge ramrods and tamped the food down their gullets like grapeshot being packed down the muzzles of some rusty old cannons. Ho! Ho! Ho! Just kidding! Anyway, they shared a good meal and dozed off pretty late that night.
        Frogstick woke up early the next morning and went out to take a look around. He walked past the big old barn towards the north border of the field, where a thick border of Australian pines hid the view of what lay beyond their thick growth. Curious, he pushed his way through the heavy branches and climbed through to the other side. There, emerging into the bright sunlight, he stopped and gazed in wonder.
        A green, neatly mown lawn was in front of him, and to his right and his left a sparkling black asphalt road stretched from east to west as far as the eye could see. On the other side of this road a ten foot chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire, compassed the emerald lawn, bordering the road as it ran into the obscure and discomborbled distance, an unbreakable steel setting for the man-made emerald that lay before him. Beyond this unpleasant border of steel, a landscape filled with manicured greenery led the eye to the horizon, where a vast city crouched like a devouring spider upon its verdant web. Huge trees, sculpted in the images of various native creatures, were scattered here and there upon this fertile plain, while monorails purringly whisked their unseen passengers across the breadth of the broad, flat expanse.
        So, this was Florida World!
        Frogstick looked with revulsion at its neatness and its angular architectural lines. Coming so recently from the gorgeous complexity of the primeval wilderness, the Frogger was experiencing a major dose of culture shock. The steel fence before him stood as an effective rebuke to any naive fool inclined to try to wander freely upon this territory. For a long while Frogstick stood, eyeing the sorry spectacle.
        The well-planned money-making machine before him was a microcosm of the new Florida. No one unwilling or unable to pay the price of admission was welcome here. But for those willing and able to pay, a glut of synthetic delights was for sale, along with the sunshine and the plastic souvenirs. Frogstick was examining this city with such absorption that he didn't even hear the truck.
        The truck idled up to Frogstick as softly as the kiss as a velvet fist. Suddenly the riders swung into a blur of concerted action; two huge men leaped from the bed and seized Frogstick from behind in a determined grip.
        "Hey, stop it!" he cried, and he fought them with all of his might, thinking that he was fighting for his life. He threw them around, but they held on. He stomped the shin of the man on his right and boxed the ear of the one on his left. He was beginning to bolt towards the pines when the driver of the truck closed in from behind.
        Frogstick didn't see the blackjack. The brutal crash of the unseen blow turned his world into a ringing haze, a strangely silent state of suspended awareness. Then his head slammed against the asphalt, and Frogstick passed out.