Pop by Robert Gipe

Author:Robert Gipe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

I said, “What’s that big pecker-looking thing sticking out of the woods over there?”

Sam said, “It’s a vibrator. The space aliens use it to vibrate the coal from its seams. The aliens have masterminded this process whereby the vibrator, as it loosens and vacuums out coal, also poops out topsoil, so that the mountains never change their shape and maintain their fertility. What the vibrator poops out is superfertile, so botanic diversity is preserved. Then with all our new critters, we are more biodiverse than ever.”

I said, “It is a strange and exciting world you’ve hatched there, Sam.”

Sam says, “Yes. But strangely familiar. A world we’ve all known in our dreams.”

Sam gave me a beer. We drank. By ten, the night turned foggy. The moon disappeared. Pennyroyal hollered, “Action,” through a megaphone.

It started quietly. A single badger played electric guitar. A groundhog bass. A raccoon on drums. A choir, mostly female, all dressed as birds, began singing “Little Birdie.” They tore apart humongous bird nests and threw the sticks on the fire. They sang “I’ll Fly Away.” Community elders dressed as oxen formed two circles, one circle walking clockwise, one walking counterclockwise. Draft horses in miners stripes form a third circle. Sam appeared as Sam Hyena. Sam Hyena, in a Shriners fez and gold glitter tails, did a lazy two-step into the center of the dancers. He spins slowly, his hands twisting into the sky like drunken flames. Mothers passed bowls of food, laughed at Sam Hyena. Teenagers roasted marshmallows. People sat on tailgates and showed one another their new fur, claws, sharp teeth.

Sam Hyena called Tater Cheatum into the center of the circle. The women and children sang as he entered, a golden Sasquatch. The children’s voices rang soft and clear as spring water. Cheatum began to sing “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground.” The angel band did not sing Tater down. But neither did they stop singing their own bird songs. The Hyena raised his arms to silence them. Some fell quiet, others did not. Tater Sasquatch listened to the singing, which continued. Tater Sasquatch listened harder. The Sasquatch and the Hyena joined the singing of the women and children. They kept singing as children threw diesel on other piles of wood, created other fires. Teenage girls did a ballet with D9 bulldozers, drove the bulldozers off the edge of cliffs. Their stunt doubles jumped from the dozers as they went over the edge. The smoke and fog grew thick. We became less visible to one another, but still they sang.

Pennyroyal cued the spaceship, and lights exploded throughout the space and began to flash. It was all fake, but I guarantee if you’d been there, you’d of thought they was a spaceship landing on that strip job. The ship moves down its cables towards the people. All sound stops, except the sound of the fires, the spaceship sliding on its cable, and a single woman singing “Little Birdie.” The marshmallow people begin to fall from the ship in comic fashion, bounce and roll, like people do in inflatable sumo wrestler suits.

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