“It will the next time,” Oreo warned. She finished quickly and moved silently to the door. When she yanked it open and looked down, she was disappointed in herself. It wasn’t a midget, just a normal-sized redheaded shifty-eyed kid of about eight. “It’s a gypsy!” the boy howled when he saw Oreo, and he ran off.
What kind of dumb kid thinks I’m a gypsy? Oreo thought. A Canadian dumb kid, she found out a few minutes later, when he came back with his parents. Oreo smiled. The boy’s parents were midgets. She hadn’t lost her eye for spotting midget blood after all.
“I’m Moe,” the man said.
“And I’m Flo,” said the woman.
“And we’re here to say hello,” they said together.
Oreo was about to introduce herself, but she thought that more than three rhymes in one chorus would be too Cole Porter. Instead, she leaned down and said, “And what’s your name, little boy?”
“Look into your crystal ball, gypsy.”
Scrock, thought Oreo.
His parents apologized for his bad manners. “Joe’s his name,” said his father.
“And we came,” said his mother, who obviously leaned toward internal rhymes, “heigh-ho-the-derry-o…”
“… from Ontario.”
Moe and Flo Doe explained, in maddening doggerel, that they sold dog whistles and had been traveling all over so that Joe, who would inherit the business, would really get to know his territory — North America.
“Yep, we came from way out yonda,” said Moe.
“On a Honda,” Oreo put in before Flo could open her mouth.
“Yes, yes, yes. How’d you guess?” Moe said, grabbing the whole couplet for himself and thus revealing a selfish streak that Flo would doubtless have to contend with in their later, choliambic years as they went scazoning toward life’s dead end.
How many caesuras would a rhymester as undisciplined as Moe not hesitate to rush into? Oreo wondered. How many catalectics make acatalectic, spondees amphimacerize in his mad rush to complete rhymes all by himself, without the help and support of the musette he loved? True, Oreo had been guilty of infringement when she snatched — nay, usurped — Flo’s Honda line, but she had just met the midget woman and could hardly be accused of disloyalty.
The twice-deprived Flo raised a determined chin and said, “Why pay the rent? Pitch a tent,” leaving Moe with his mouth open.
Oreo saw that Flo could take care of herself and stopped worrying about her. The couple explained that although three Does could ride with comfort on one motor scooter, they always traveled with two, so that either Flo or Moe was riding with Joe while either Flo or Moe rode the scooter with the family camping gear. They saved on hotel bills by camping, usually illegally, in parks and any other wide spots in the road they could find.
Oreo admired their thrift. She went back to her rock, a stone’s throw away, and took out her buffet of noshes. Since the odds were that the Does could not eat much (a nanonosh), she offered to share her food with them. They declined with a klutzy quatrain (prose version: they were looking forward to the menu they had planned and wanted to get their camp set up before they prepared their evening meal). Oreo sat on her rock ledge and watched them. While she munched on smoked sable, chopped liver, and scallioned cream cheese, the munchkins pitched a hop-o’-my-thumb tent, then scurried to and fro with their dollhouse equipment.
Flo motioned Oreo over to ask that she watch the charcoal fire they had just started in the grill while she and Moe went to the bathroom. They didn’t want little Joe poking at it.
“Whatever you do…,” said Moe.
“I beg of you…,” said Flo.
“… don’t let the flame go out…”
“… scout.”
Moe had obviously learned his lesson. He had left long pauses for Flo’s lines.
Oreo turned to the fire as they walked off. Groovy, she thought, a sacred flame to tend. She noticed that the Does’ charcoal briquettes were about the size of Chiclets.
“It’s starting to go out,” Joe complained. He was staring at the flames with pyromaniacal intensity.
“Oh, shut up. It is not.”
“Boy, will they be mad when they come back and see that you let the fire go out. It has to be a certain heat for what we’re cooking.”
Oreo looked at the fire. It was dying down. She had never tended a charcoal grill before. She couldn’t let the flame go out and scrock up her sacred trust. A failed fire tender? Never! Now, what had Flo done to get the fire going? Oreo had seen her pour some stuff from a red can over the black Chiclets. Oreo took the can and gave the dying flames a generous dousing. With a phoenix tune, the flames sprang back to life and shot up the side of the can, just in front of Oreo’s hand. Whoosh, whoosh! flapped the wings of the phoenix as the flames soared several feet straight up from the nozzle of the can. With unseemly haste, Oreo set the can shakily on the ground. It teetered and finally fell, sending a weed of flame scuttering through the dry grass. Oreo started for the can, hesitated, started again, and finally dashed forward to right it on a flat rock. Flames thrummed merrily from the nozzle.
Oreo backed off to survey the situation. “Oi vei, you mothers,” she said to the scampering flames. She turned quickly. Joe was a safe distance away behind a tree, his shifty eyes wide with excitement and glee. He was laughing at Oreo. Oreo ran first to the weed of flame and danced on it. Her sandal caught fire. She slipped it off her heel and flung it away. It hit a scabby sycamore and fell into some grass beckoning from a fork of the tree. The grass caught fire. Joe was in a pyrophilous frenzy over Oreo’s concatenating combustions. As she hopped about putting them out one by one, she knew that she was avoiding the main problem. She could hear the murmurs of the unsuspecting recreators — who might soon be piecemeal all over the foliage because Oreo was chicken shit!
She was stamping out the last small fire when she forced herself to face the red can with its high-powered Whoosh whoosh! She calculated her chances. “If it hasn’t exploded yet, it probably won’t explode. On the other hand, since it hasn’t exploded yet, it’s probably ready to explode. If I blow, who knows how wide an area might go if it should blow? On the other hand, it certainly would be dumb if I were to go over there and do the heroine bit, save everybody in the park, and get blown up myself. I mean, I don’t even know these people.”
In the time it took to read all that, Oreo had run over to the Does’ camping equipment, picked up a wee potholder in the shape of a wee mitt, shoved it on her index and middle fingers, flung herself at the can, and cut off its thrum in flagrante. Oreo smiled. Chicken shit my Aunt Minnie!
Joe looked disgusted. The only flames he had going for him now were the ones on the charcoal grill, the original sacred flame. He ran over to the grill hungrily.
Just then, Flo and Moe came back. They thanked Oreo for keeping the fire going.
“Heh, heh,” Joe snickered.
“Before we sup…,” said Flo.
“… please fill this cup,” Moe told Joe. He was stretching a point to make the rhyme. The “cup” was a bucket.
“It’s what we need — don’t you feel?” he said to his wife.
“Oh, yes, indeed — to make our meal.”
“We almost needed some water for this whole place,” Joe said, smiling nastily at Oreo. He went off swinging his bucket and whistling a medley of gypsy tunes.