Author: Our Man in Redmond

One day in late summer in India, a donkey was trotting down the road, pulling its cart behind it, when it heard a great commotion to the rear. It stopped, and with great difficulty turned itself and the cart around, and saw the most amazing sight. An elephant was coming up the road in the same direction the donkey had been traveling. But what an elephant! Its sides were decked out with a richly embroidered blanket dotted with jewels and pearls that gleamed in the sun. On its back it carried a massive howdah, with a driver and two soldiers armed with spears. A curtain obviously concealed a Great Personage within. Its tusks were tipped with a padded balls made from a golden cloth. In fact the elephant was perfect in every way, with perhaps one small exception. As it approached, the donkey could see a notch cut out of the elephant’s right ear.

“Hello, friend,” the donkey said as the elephant approached. “How are you this fine day?”

The elephant snorted and perhaps lifted its trunk just a bit as it continued down the path. “Can’t talk to the likes of you,” it said as it got closer to the donkey. “I have important work to do.”

“Really!” the donkey exclaimed. “What kind of important work would that be?”

“Well, if you must know, I’m off to the mouth of the river. The levee has failed, the city there is under water, and I am taking the rajah there to tell the people that help is on its way. Now move aside!”

The donkey had to scramble to avoid being trampled by the elephant as it marched along. By the time the donkey got itself and the cart turned around again, the elephant was rapidly advancing into the distance.

The donkey sighed and resumed its journey as well.

As fate would have it, a week or so later the donkey found itself at the city at the mouth of the river. The effects of the flood were still visible, but the people there were working hard to clean up and dry out so they could rebuild. They had also put their animals to work, and the donkey was amazed to see the elephant who had passed him on the road there as well. But if it had not been for the great notch in its ear, the donkey would never have recognized it. The howdah and fancy trappings were gone, replaced by a great harness made of rope, and the elephant was hard at work moving logs and other heavy material.

“Well, friend,” the donkey called out, “I’m certainly surprised to see you here. What happened to you?”

The elephant looked up, then lowered its head. “I arrived here and the rajah told the people that help was on its way. However, it seems that the people had been promised help one too many times, and help had never arrived, so in their anger they tore down the howdah and put me to work.” But before the elephant could tell the gruesme details of what had happened to the rajah and his guards, its new master spurred it on and it went back to its labors.

Be kind to those you meet on your way up, because you may well meet them again on your way down.

The sky was as black as the inside of a slavedriver’s soul. Rain continued to come down in torrents, as it had all week. The radio and TV had been saying it for days, the mayor had been saying it for hours, and now Jim’s neighbor was saying it to Jim. It was time to leave the city before the levee broke and the flooding started.

“C’mon, Jim, get in the car!” the neighbor yelled over the sound of the wind and rain. “Time to go!”

“I’m not worried,” Jim called back. “God will save me.”

“Jim, come on,” the neighbor pleaded. “They’re evacuating now. I’ve got room. Get in.”

“God will save me,” Jim repeated.

The neighbor wondered whether he should go force Jim into the car, but then he looked at the flow of cars heading out of the city and decided he needed to go if he were to save himself.

Jim returned to the house and continued his prayers to God to save him.

Soon the traffic thinned to a trickle and then, amazingly, to nothing as everyone in the city managed to find higher ground. Everyone, that is, except Jim (and maybe a few people like him).

From his second-story bedroom window Jim alternated between watching the rain and praying. Eventually the silence was broken by the sound of an amplified voice coming from a police car. “You! Up in the window. Come down now. That’s an order. The flooding is about to start.”

“Don’t worry,” he called back to the policemen. “God will save me.”

“If you do not come down we will force our way in and –“

The thread remained unfinished as an alarm sounded over the policemen’s radio. The alert was unmistakeable: LEVEE BREACHED. LEAVE NOW. The police car pulled away. Jim returned to his praying.

Within the hour water began to fill the streets. It was a dark, rising water, worse than the clouds because it was closer and filling the lower story of the house. Still Jim continued to pray.

The water continued to rise. Driftwood and other objects rushed past. The water came up to the bottom of the windows, then the top of the front door. Amazingly, from the direction of what had once been the river but was now just a part of the flood, a boat came, obviously running under power. It maneuvered its way toward Jim’s house, and an inflatable raft appeared over the side.

“Get in,” the man in the boat shouted over the roar of the water.

“I’m okay,” said Jim. “God will save me.”

“Don’t be a fool,” the boatman shouted.

The water was now rising faster. Jim left the window open — there seemed to be little point in closing it now — and made his way through the attic up through a trap door and onto the roof. When he got to the roof the boat was gone. Still he continued to pray.

As he prayed, over the roar of the rain and the water he heard the beatings of the rotors of a helicopter overhead. its searchlight picked out Jim on the roof. The helicopter came to hover overhead and dropped a ladder down to the roof.

Jim ignored the ladder. “God will save me,” he said, though he knew no one but God would be able to hear him. “God will save me.”

The pilot of the helicopter watched as Jim turned his back on the proferred ladder. “Get ready to go down and get him,” he said to the other crewman, who was readying a lifeline and harness.

But it turned out to be too late. The pilot watched, powerless to help, as the waters finally took their toll on the house. Jim sank into water, and darkness, and death.

 . . . and suddenly, pearly light. The roaring was gone , replaced by harps and a choir, and Jim found himself standing in front of the Pearly Gates, facing none other than St. Peter himself.

“Well! Jim!” St. Peter said. “This is literally an unexpected surprise. I didn’t think we would see you here for a good long time.”

“What happened?” Jim asked the heavenly gatekeeper. “I called upon God in the moment of my trouble. I was sure He was going to save me.”

“Hold on,” St. Peter said. “I’ll check.” He went out of sight for a minute or two, then returned with a piece of exquisitely-laid notepaper, which he handed to Jim without comment.

Jim read the note, written of course in the most beautiful of penmanship:

FROM THE DESK OF
GOD

Jim:

I don’t understand it either.

I sent your neighbor to save you.

I sent a policeman to save you.

I sent a boat to save you.

I even sent a helicopter to save you.

What happened, indeed?

– G.

Remember back with me to the 1930s . . . for all I know, Americans may soon know this time as the First Great Depression. Times were very hard, work was scarce, and many an honest man was reduced to going from door to door, looking for any work he could find to get money and food. Sometimes the money took second place.

One such man was a fellow by the name of Stan. Stan was in his mid-twenties, had been a farmhand, but when the dust storms took out the farms in Kansas and Oklahoma he was forced out onto the road like many other men. Some, like the Joads of The Grapes Of Wrath, went west to California. Stan went east, toward Georgia and the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Along the way he picked up a banjo, a few songs and stories, and a mongrel dog he called Ole Bill. But the stories behind those events will have to wait for another time.

Stan and Ole Bill made their way to the farm country of southern Pennsylvania. Along the way Stan picked peaches and apples, harvested some tobacco, and did occasional odd jobs, but for the most part they just walked, At night, if he was lucky, Stan would make it to a hobo camp where he and Ole Bill could pick up a couple of songs and share in some mulligan stew. Often, though, he wasn’t so lucky, and there were many days he would sleep outside and hope it didn’t rain.

He made it to Pennsylvania just in time to miss the harvest, so he went to the old standby: knocking on doors to see if anyone wanted work in exchange for food for him and Ole Bill. The first two doors he knocked on stayed closed. The third was shut in his face. The fourth added the flourish of a shotgun and a threat to shoot the two of them if the owner of the shotgun ever saw them again.

Finally, at the fifth house, owned by a Mr. Jenks, Stan found a sympathetic ear. Jenks said he didn’t have any work for Stan, but he knew times were hard and besides, he’d been the recipient of some kindness when he was down on his luck. Mrs. Jenks let Stan wash the dishes after a chicken dinner, and then Stan offered to play a few tunes while Ole Bill gnawed happily on a soup bone Mrs. Jenks had found “jus’ layin’ around.”

They bedded down around eight P.M. Jenks got a couple of blankets from a cedar chest in the bedroom and led Stan and Ole Bill to the barn. “It ain’t much,” he said, “but it’s clean and dry. Jus’ keep that dog of yours tied up — I don’t want him to get into the livestock.”

“I’m not too worried about Ole Bill,” Stan said. “He’s been with me for almost two years and never yet left my side.” Still, to be safe, they found a piece of rope and tethered Ole Bill, giving him plenty of room to walk around. Stan covered himself with the blankets and the two of them were asleep within minutes.

In the middle of the night Stan woke suddenly to the sound of a flock of chickens squawking in agitation, and Ole Bill baying and barking like he had the Devil of all racoons treed. By a few slivers of moonlight filtering into the barn he could see the rope, still attached where Jenks had tied it, but Ole Bill had slipped out of it. For a moment Stan panicked. When he picked up Ole Bill somewhere in Arkansas, the dog had almost grown into maturity; he had no idea of the dog’s history. Ole Bill had never shown any inclination to do anything more than some ritual butt-sniffing before, but he had no idea what Ole Bill had subsisted on before they started traveling together.

As he threw off the blankets and started toward the noise, Stan heard Jenks yell “Stay there!” and then, as he found his way to the henhouse, he saw Jenks in a nightshirt, holding a rifle in one hand and trying to balance it while holding a lantern in the other.

By the light of the moon and the lantern the two of them could see that Old Bill had a man trapped in a corner of the fence surrounding the chicken yard. Ole Bill was barking and growling at the man, and if the man so much as tried to move, Ole Bill would growl and bark louder and force his quarry back into the corner. Stan searched frantically around the yard, but he saw no blood, no feathers, no indication that Ole Bill had done any damage to Jenks’ chickens.

Jenks sat the lantern on the ground and handed the rifle to Stan. “I hope you know how to use one of these,” he said. “Hold him there until I get back.” About an hour later Jenks appeared with the local sheriff. With Stan’s help controllling Ole Bill the sheriff took charge of the intruder, who by now was begging to be locked up — anything to get away from that dog.

“That dog of yours is entitled to a reward,” the sheriff told Stan the next morning. “The fellow he cornered’s confessed to four different thefts up and down Post Hill Road. The Jenks house surely woulda been the fifth if it hadn’t been for Ole Bill.”

Two days later Jenks introduced Stan to a friend of his who ran a local bakery. Stan went to work for the baker and picked up a few extra dollars playing the banjo at local dances. The next summer he married a girl that lived in the house where he’d been greeted with a shotgun. Years later, when he became mayor of that same small town and was known throughout the area as the owner of Ole Bill’s Bakery, he would tell people about small acts of kindness, and how you never know how they’ll be repaid, or by whom, or what will eventually result from them.

Once upon a time a flock of birds was flying south for the winter. They had gotten a late start, and many other flocks had gone before them; and those earlier flocks had eaten all the food that was easily had. The birds flew on, getting hungrier by the minute.

Suddenly one of the youngest of the doves called out to the leader. “Look! Down there!” he shouted. “I see some seeds. Suppertime!” Something didn’t look right to the old dove king, but at that moment he had no choice. His hunger and his concern for the flock outweighed the caution he might normally have displayed, and he directed the flock down toward the cache of seeds.

The doves landed and began to wolf down the seeds, so to speak, but suddenly they heard a rustling noise and saw a net descending on them. They tried to fly, but it was too late! They were trapped! They fluttered and flapped and flapped and fluttered, but all to no avail.

As the dove king struggled in vain, he saw a hunter approach the flock with a club in his hand. Quickly, he formulated a plan. “Everyone, work together!” he shouted. “We must all fly together, or we are done for! One — two — “

 . . . And as the hunter watched in astonishment, the net, birds and all, rose from the ground.

“Great!” one of the doves said. “Well cone! . . . Uh, what now?”

“Don’t worry,” the king replied. “I have a plan, but we shall all have to execute it together, no matter how absurd it sounds. Now everyone — fly to the NORTH!”

Under normal circumstances you might as well try to get a human to pass up a plate of Mom’s fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies as to try to get birds to fly north in the winter. But these birds had grasped the gravity of the situation, as it were, and had figured out that they had to work together or they were all going to die, trapped in the net. At length they came to a field where the dove king ordered them to set down.

Once they were safely on the ground the dove king cooed a loud call. Not long after that a mouse appeared from a hole in the ground. The doves could tell by his bearing that he was a very important mouse indeed, and the dove king introduced them to his friend the King of the Mice. “His Highness and I are old friends,” the dove king said, “and we’ve helped each other out of some scrapes before.

“Hang on there, old friend,” the mouse king said, “I’ll have you out of there in no time.”

“Don’t worry about me!” the old king said. “See to my subjects first.” The mouse king, being very wise for a mouse, recognized the wisdom in this, and called for some of his subjects to help him gnaw through the netting.

It wasn’t long before the mice had freed all of the doves and, with the help of a sharp-eyed owl who was more interested in rabbits than seeds, they located enough food — well away from any snares — to continue on their journey, united in their strength.

Once upon a time there was a man who had a five-year-old son. He loved his son very much, of course, and cared for him as any parent would.

One day when he had to leave his village on business, the man left his son in the care of a neighbor. The neighbor had a son just the same age, and the two of them were happy to have some time to spend together.

While the man was gone, the village was raided by bandits. The bandits burned, and looted, and pillaged, and siezed captives, as bandits do. They grabbed the man’s son and took him away with them. The boy’s playmate was not so lucky, for the bandits burned the neighbor’s house to the ground, and their entire family burned in the fire.

When the man returned to his village and saw what had happened, he was overcome with grief. In the ashes of his neighbor’s home he found a body, burned beyond recognition, that he took to be his son’s. He carried the body away, buried it, and mourned for his son every day thereafter.

About four years later the boy, left unattended by the bandits, managed to escape. He made his way back to the village, and though the memory of his past was dim, he remembered his father’s name and went looking for him.

His father had rebuilt his house, with a little shrine to his son, and was sitting quietly before the shrine when he heard a knock at the door. The father went to answer the door and saw a young boy standing there.

“Father?” the boy asked. “Is that you?”

The father looked at the boy, said “Go away,” and closed the door.

The boy knocked again, louder this time. “Father! I have returned!”

The father threw the door open and yelled at the boy. “Stop mocking me!” he said. “Isn’t my grief enough? Go away and stop causing me pain!” and closed the door again.

The boy pounded at the door, cried, yelled for his father, but was only met with threats and curses, and eventually silence. At last the boy turned and went away, never to return.

The frogs have lived in their ponds almost from the Beginning, and as long as frogs have lived in ponds, they have sung a song:

Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Better-go-round! Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Better-go-round!

Well, one day as the frogs splashed happily in a pond made just for them, stocked with their favorite foods, they decided they wanted a king. Now don’t ask me why they decided they wanted a king. You can’t know everything about a story, even one as simple as this. But for whatever reason, they decided they wanted a king to rule over them, so they changed their song and made it a prayer to Father Io:

Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Give-us-a-king! Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Give-us-a-king!

Now Father Io was in his palace atop Mount Olympus, and he heard the frogs singing Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Give-us-a-king! Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Give-us-a-king! . . . and he thought that was funny. Fall down hilarious! He laughed, and laughed, and finally when he got done laughing, he went over to the corner where he kept the brace of thunderbolts Vulcan had made for him. “I’ll give them the kind of king they should have,” he laughed in his best Geoffrey Holder voice.

He went out on the porch, took careful aim at the pond far below, cocked his mighty right thunderbolt-throwing arm, and . . . BLAM! Scored a hole-in-one at the base of a tree that overlooked the pond. There was a mighty CRACK! as the tree split from the ground, followed by a mighty CREAK! as the tree’s roots tore out of the ground, and finally a mighty SPLASH! as the tree fell into the pond.

All was silent for a moment. If you’ve ever thrown a rock into the frogs’ pond, you know how their singing stops while they all head for cover. But soon it starts again, as it did after the noise of the falling tree had faded away.

Knee-deep! Knee-deep! What-is-that-thing? Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Is-it-a-king? they asked. Knee-deep! Knee-deep! What-is-that-thing! Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Are-you-a-king! they asked the tree, but the tree, which of course had just been through a most traumatic experience and was only now starting on its way to being a log, didn’t answer.

Knee-deep! Knee-deep! What-is-that-thing! Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Are-you-a-king! they asked again, but still, the log didn’t answer them back.

Then one frog, braver than the rest, decided to go swim out to see what this new king was about. He poked his head up out of the water, touched the log quickly, and dove back in even more quickly. Nothing happened.

So he poked his head out of the water again, and this time he poked the log, but he didn’t dive back into the water. Still, nothing happened.

Now a couple of the other frogs joined him. They poked the log, and got the same non-response. Then more frogs came out, and a couple of adventurous frogs actually got up and walked on the log! Soon there were frogs all up and down the log, jumping into the pond and then jumping back onto the log again. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that frogs are not the brightest creatures Mother Nature put on the earth, right up there with clams, particularly intelligent beds of petunias, and posters at Free Republic. But even the dimmest of these frogs was beginning to realize that, whatever this thing was, it was not going to rule over them. So, they started up their chant to Father Io again.

Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Give-us-a-king! Knee-deep! Knee-deep! Give-us-a-king!

Now Father Io was getting annoyed and tired of the frogs’ croaking, so he sent a stork to the pond. The frogs hailed the stork as their king, but changed their tune rather quickly as the stork began to eat the frogs, one by one.

Better no rule than cruel rule.

Once upon a time there was a great and strong cedar tree who lived in the forest.

But even though the cedar tree was great and strong, she was lonely. In fact, she was so lonely that sometimes she felt as though she would drown in her own tears.

And the Creator looked down and said: This is not right.

So he caused a cedar seed to blow upon the south wind, and it settled and took root at the feet of the great and strong cedar. And she looked at the cedar seed as it grew and she said: You will be my grandson, and I shall be your grandmother cedar. And Grandmother Cedar was happy.

And the Creator looked down and said: This is right.

And when the deer would come around to nibble on the tender cedar shoots, Grandmother Cedar would wave her great and strong branches and frighten the deer away.

And the cedar shoot grew into a sapling. And when the wind would blow so hard that the sapling bent so that it thought it would break, Grandmother Cedar would wrap her strong limbs around the sapling to shelter it from the wind.

And the sapling grew into a young tree. And when the sun would beat down upon the little cedar tree, and it was so hot that the little tree was afraid that its skin would blister, and crack and burn, Grandmother Cedar would move her branches to shade the little cedar tree, and keep the sun from burning its skin.

And the little tree grew strong. And when her grandson was lonely, Grandmother Cedar would call out with her strong mind, and cause the birds to nest in her grandson’s branches, and sing to him, and keep him company.

And the Creator looked down and said: This is right.

But then time went on, and Grandmother Cedar began to get old, and her limbs began to break, and she was not as strong as she used to be, and she could no longer move like she once did. And she began to feel old, and useless, and sad, and she didn’t want to live any more.

And the Creator looked down and said: This is not right.

So then her grandson said to her: Grandmother, when I was just a shoot, and the deer would come to nibble on me, did you not wave your branches and frighten the deer away?

And Grandmother Cedar said, Yes, I did. And her grandson said: Now I am great and strong, and I will protect you from harm.

And her grandson said to her: Grandmother, when I was just a sapling, and the wind would blow, and I would bend until I was afraid I would break, did you not wrap your strong arms around me to protect me from the storm?

And Grandmother Cedar said: Yes, I did. And her grandson said: Now I am great and strong, and I shall wrap my arms around you, and protect you from the storm.

And her grandson said to her: Grandmother, when I was just a young tree, and the sun would beat down upon me until I was afraid my skin would blister,and crack and burn, did you not move your great limbs to shade me from the sun?

And Grandmother Cedar said: Yes, I did. And her grandson said: Now I am great and strong, and I shall move my limbs, and I shall shade you from the sun.

And her grandson said to her: Grandmother, when I was lonely, did you not use your strong mind to call out to the birds of the forest, and have them come nest in my branches, and sing to me, and keep me company?

And Grandmother Cedar said: Yes, I did. And her grandson said: Now my mind is strong, and I shall call out to the birds of the forest, and they will come and nest in your branches, and sing to you, and keep you company. You took care of me when I was young, and now that you are old, I shall take care of you.

And the Creator looked down and said: This is right.