The next morning I assumed I’d be last down as usual but no one was in the kitchen. There was no newspaper. Usually by the time I came down somebody had already brought in the paper, but since this had always happened before I got there I was unclear on the process. Maybe today I was first up. I started a pot of coffee in Mrs. W.’s ancient percolator then retrieved the paper from the driveway. As I was returning to the house I thought I heard a coyote but shook it off as a misperception. There were no coyotes in Tennessee in 1974.
When I got back to the kitchen, the coffee was perking and Clarence was pouring himself a bowl of cereal.
“Where’s Stoney?” I asked.
“In the garden,” he said.
“Why?” I asked. Stoney wasn’t much of an outdoorsman.
“Don Juan said a man must return to his plants,” said Clarence, somberly.
What kind of plants?” I asked.
“The Datura will become his friend,” said Clarence.
“Datura?”
“Yes. It will teach Stoney to fly,” he said, ladling maybe half a cup of sugar onto his Cheerios® and cracking open a Coke.®
“Fly? Like a bird?”
“Don Juan refused to answer this question.”
“Is this the guy from that Carlos Castaneda book you talk about all the time?” I asked.
“When a man has been enlightened he seeks others that share his path,” he said, between mouthfuls of highly sugared Cheerios®.
“‘Yes’ and ‘no’ are your options on answering that question,” I said.
“You Americans are so limited in your outlook,” he said, slurping back his Coke so fast that he coughed with his mouth closed and a lot of it sprayed out of his nose.
“Thank you for the insight, professor,” I said. He was looking at the mess he’d just made and thinking through whether he wanted to eat his Cheerios®, now bathed in Coca-Cola® and snot. He decided not, and moved his current breakfast to the sink, took out another bowl, and started afresh. Again he put at least half a cup of sugar on his Cheerios®. I looked out the window and Stoney appeared to be hopping around the garden like a frog. He tried to hop off after a squirrel but hit his head on a hardwood tree, which caught him up short. He looked at the tree in some confusion, as though it were not supposed to be there, then hopped off in the other direction.
“What have you done to Stoney?” I asked.
“Following the example of my own tutor, I have instructed Stonewall in the ways of the Datura.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A tool of enlightenment. A friend for Stoney,” he said. I had no patience for this.
“Okay, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to grab your ear and hold it really hard and tight so you can’t get away and then I’m going to beat the living daylights out of you until you tell me what’s going on with Stoney.”
“You’d never do that,” he said.
“Yes I would.” I asked. Stoney came back in from outside, holding his hands in front of him in a chipmunk-like way and sniffing at everything.
“Where is he?” Stoney asked.
“Who?” Clarence and I asked.
“The bearded dwarf in the wheelchair,” he said. “He was here just a few minutes ago. Before I went outside. He was singing ‘Free Bird.’”
“Would you like to sit down, Stoney?” I asked.
“Oh, fuck no. I need to fly.”
“Clarence said something about that,” I said. Stoney darted off and I could hear him gallop up the stairs. “Okay,” I said, grabbing Clarence’s ear. He stood. “So Stoney is non compos mentis but has no drug dealer here.” I had his ear pretty tight.
“So?” Clarence asked, worried.
“So you have introduced him to something weird,” I said.
“This is a journey for Stoney,” said Clarence. “None of your bee’s wax.”
“Also a journey for you,” I said.
“How so?” he asked. I pulled up on his ear a little bit.
“Ow!” he said.
I looked down and he was standing on his tiptoes. I pulled up the tiniest bit more. I wasn’t actually going to hit him, of course.
“The longest journey starts with a single step,” I said.
“Don Juan said something like that,” he said. I lifted his ear a fraction of an inch higher. His tippy-toes rose a bit. I wasn’t really hurting him, nor would I, but I’d had about enough of him.
“What did you give Stoney?” I asked.
“It’s just jimson weed!” he said. I let him go. “Don Juan gave it to Carlos Castaneda lots of times.”
“Where did you find it?”
“It’s growing in the back yard,” he answered, exasperated. Stoney, barefoot, came bounding down the stairs, hopping from a crouch, more kangaroo than frog now. Frogs land on their front legs, kangaroos don’t, and he was managing to hop around using only his legs despite the fact that he lacked a kangaroo’s tail for counterbalance and stability. He took the last six stairs in one hop and landed on a throw-rug that immediately slipped out from under him, causing him to fall flat on his back with an enormous crash. Clarence and I hurried over to see if he was okay.
“That was fucking amazing,” he said, to the ceiling.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I will never be the same again,” he said.
“Move your toes for me, handsome Stono,” I said. He did.
“I must have been flying for hours,” he said.
“No, you hopped down the stairs and fell on your ass. It lasted at most four seconds.” He looked up at me quizzically.
“Your reality is so …” he began.
“Reality-based?” I asked.
“Constipated,” he said. Still lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, he retrieved a crumpled pack of Winstons from a pocket and tried to shake one free. Three or four fell out but he only seemed to notice the one that made it to his mouth. He had difficulty with his lighter and never got it to flame but thought he’d actually lit the cigarette, taking long drags from it and making like he was blowing smoke rings.
“Wow—that one bounced of the ceiling,” he said. “I’ve never seen that.”
“It happens,” I said. After a few seconds of contemplating imaginary smoke rings he appeared to pluck something invisible out of the air and put it in his mouth.
“What was that?” I asked.
“One of them turned into a Life Saver®,” he said, then looked at me and smiled shyly. “I knew you thought I was handsome,” he said. I left him to his reverie and looked up the Poison Control hotline phone number in the Yellow Pages. Somebody picked up after two rings.
“Poison Control Hotline,” said a low voice. “Who’m I speakin’ to?” He had a very East Tennessee accent.
“Henry Baida,” I said.
“What can I do you for, Mr. Baida?” he asked, then made a sound somewhere between a hiccup and a burp.
“I have a friend who may have eaten some jimson weed,” I said.
“Ah, shit,” he said. “How much?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“It doesn’t really matter. It wouldn’ tell me much even if you knowed. So he’s been readin’ Carlos Castaneda?” asked Poison Control, then made that noise again.
“Well, he’s got a friend who put him up to it who’s always quoting that damned book.”
“What’s he doin’?” asked Poison Control.
“Hallucinating. Hopping around like a kangaroo. Seeing things that aren’t there,” I said.
“How long ago’d he take it?” asked Poison Control.
“Hang on,” I said. “Yo. Einstein,” I said to Clarence. “How long ago did Stoney eat that stuff?”
“Maybe two hours?” he answered.
“My sources say about two hours ago,” I said to Poison Control.
“Really, that doesn’t much matter, either,” he said. “If you was to catch it real early you might could get him to puke it back up, but by the time you starts seein’ pictures, there’s nothin’ to do but ride it out.”
“How long will that take?” I asked.
“Well, assumin’ it’s not fatal, four to eight hours, as a rule, but a guy once tol’ me he’d tripped for two whole days on that shit.” He hiccupped again.
“Is there an antidote?” I asked.
“Nope.” I could almost hear his sadly shaking his head.
“What are the effects like?” I asked. There was a pause while Poison Control considered his answer.
“Well, it reminds me of taking a bunch of Benadryl® and then drinking a bottle of codeine cough syrup, only wif’ shimson weed you get hallucinations kindly like that blue blotter acid that was around in 1970,” he said.
“I see.”
“If’n it don’t kill him, tell him that there’s some good acid out there that won’t fuck him up nearly as much as that Datura shit. It looks like a Anacin tablet with a pink dot on it, but it’s a king-hell acid and you don’t do crazy shit like you do on the Datura. It’s lots safer’n eatin’ shit outta the back yard. Plus, when you eat weeds off the ground, how d’ya know a dog didn’ just piss on it?” I heard the sound of something falling in the living room.
“Hang on,” I said. “I need to go check on something. Don’t hang up, I have some questions.” I put down the phone and ran over the living room to find Stoney, flushed and red, trying to balance a ladder-back chair on his chin. Clarence was looking on with something between concern and alarm. I took the chair from Stoney.
“Talk to him when he’s doing something stupid,” I said to Clarence.
“About what?”
“Anything except Carlos Castaneda. Try baseball.” I ran back to the phone.
“Okay, so how many people die from this?” I asked Poison Control.
“Oh, wow, man, not sure. Not lots, I don’ think. Some. What was he doing when you checked on him?” He hiccupped. “Scuse me,” he said.
“He was trying to balance a chair on his chin,” I said.
“Oh, that’s not gonna go well,” he said. “You’re real uncoordinated and clumsy when you’re on that shit. Drop stuff all the time. But you think you’re Superman and you don’t understand why you keep fuckin’ up.”
“Any tips on how to get him through this?”
“Not really. Jush gotta live through it. Don’t let him pick up anything expensive, ‘cause he’ll break it.”
“Okay,” I said, preparing to hang up.
“I can tell you what not to do,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, hesitantly.
“I got this friend Junior down in Wadley. You know Wadley?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, unsure where this was going.
“Well when Junior did jimson weed he got so crazy I decided to start feeding him tequila figuring it would calm him down a little and thinkin’ he might get so drunk he’d pass out and sleep it off. But after maybe a pint of tequila he decided to go for a motorcycle ride. We stopped him, but he’s a big guy and was pretty determined and I think he may have broke a couple of Earl’s fingers in the ensuin’ melee. And then we went back to the house to watch the Alabama/USC game and nobody was watching Junior and then not ten minutes later we seen him sailing off down the back yard in his colors and motorcycle helmet on his little sister’s teeny pink Barbie® bike and damned if he didn’t go straight into the fish pond helmet and all so we had to run down there and pull him out so we missed most of the second half. It was one of the Bear’s last games, too.”
“Okay. So no tequila,” I said.
“No liquor of any kind. Maybe some beer. Or white wine,” he said.
“But no red wine?”
“No, no, no. Red wine would be a big mistake,” said Poison Control.
“Why is red wine a mistake but white wine is okay?” I asked.
“Because red wine will stain the carpet.”
Okay, bud. Gotta go.” I hung up.
“Good luck.” I returned to the living room. Stoney was sitting on the couch, sunglasses on, with a cigarette that was actually lit. Clarence was looking at Stoney with rapt attention.
“Which brings us to doggie style,” said Stoney.
“What are you guys talking about?” I asked.
“Stoney’s explaining the birds and the bees,” said Clarence.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Clarence. I told you to talk about baseball.”
“But the Tigers lost. Haven’t been the same since Denny McClain flamed out,” said Stoney. “Don’t wanna talk about baseball.” The doorbell rang.
“Oh, Lord. What now?” I asked no one. “Stay here. Watch Stoney. Keep him occupied.”
“Okay, so you were saying doggie style?” Clarence asked, as I left the room.
“No. Stoney, talk about anything else in the world.” I walked the few feet to the front door and opened it. There on the front porch were Ginny and her mother.
“Hello, Mrs. McColl. Hello Ginny,” I said. “Come in!”
“We’re just returning from a tournament at the University of Georgia and thought we’d come by and collect Clarence,” said Mrs. McColl. “We’re going to be in town for a few days and I’m sure he’d like to see his friends on Lookout Mountain,” she said, smiling. “How have you all been getting along?” At this point Clarence wandered into the entrance hall. He did not look especially happy.
“Clarence and Stoney have become fast friends. Clarence can do the crossword in less than seven minutes,” I said.
“Hi, Mom,” he said, sullenly.
“So what do you say to spending a few days at your own house?” she asked, beaming and obviously happy to see him.
“I actually kind of like it here,” he said. “Stoney’s been teaching me stuff.”
“Who’s this Stoney?” she asked.
“My friend Thomas Jackson from college. Mrs. Wertheimer is teaching us higher math this summer,” I said.
“Like … tutoring?” asked Mrs. McColl.
“Sort of, I guess, yes ma’am.” At this point Stoney came into the hall. He was doubled over, arms wrapped around his shins and hands clasped to his ankles, face between his thighs, lit cigarette between his lips, walking backwards, so that both his ass and his upside-down face were advancing in the same direction. When he reached us in the hall, he kind of tilted over backwards so that he rolled over his shoulders and ended up standing, in a graceful, gymnastic motion, cigarette still between his lips. He bowed slightly and smiled.
“Hello Clarence’s mom,” he said, and politely shook her hand. “He looks just like you. Good kid. You should be proud.” He turned to Ginny. “Hello pretty Peabody girl from near Campus Grill. Nice to see you again.” He still had his sunglasses on and a Winston dangling from his lips, but was otherwise almost courtly. Then he turned suddenly and ran out the back door like a scalded cat.
“What a strange young man,” said Mrs. McColl.
“He’s pretty cool. He’s just having a Yaqui visionary experience,” said Clarence. Ginny reached over and smacked him on the back of the head with a frown.
“When’s Margaret going to be back?” Mrs. McColl asked.
“Yes, ma’am. She’s at a bridge tournament in Callaway Gardens,” I said.
“Oh, she told me. I just can’t remember when she’s supposed to be back,” said Mrs. McColl.
“Sunday or Monday, depending on when they play Sunday,” I said.
“Well, I think we’re in town until Tuesday, so thank her for me and tell her if she doesn’t mind I’ll bring him back then.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s really okay if you want to leave me here,” said Clarence. At this point there was the unmistakable sound of a coyote from the back yard.
“What was that?” asked Mrs. McColl.
“I’ve been hearing coyote sounds the last day or so,” I said, “which is odd, because I don’t think we have coyotes here.”
“Come along, Clarence,” said Mrs. McColl.
“Really, Mom. I’m fine here,” said Clarence.
“No, you should come home,” she said.
“All right,” he said, glumly. There were smiles all around except for Clarence as the McColls made their good-byes and left. In the back yard, Stoney was crouched like a dog and was yip-yip-yipping like a coyote. The back door was still open. It was oppressively hot outside, and Stoney was perspiring heavily. I crossed the yard to talk to him as he barked.
“Come inside, Stoney,” I said.
“But I’m hungry,” he said. “I need to catch the squirrel who lives in this tree.”
“What would you do with a squirrel?” I asked. He stood and pitched his cigarette butt contemplatively.
“Well, we could get a chicken and some beans and tomatoes and corn and make a Brunswick stew. Or add some pork to that and we could make Kentucky burgoo.
“Come back inside, Stoney.”
“But what will we eat?”
“Cold pizza,” I said.
“Oh man, that’s like, wow, like, so cool.” He flopped straight onto his back. I cigarette popped out of his pocket. He held it at arm’s length and contemplated it carefully before lighting it. He then carefully inserted the coal end into his mouth and blew through the cigarette backwards so that a column of blue smoke rose straight into the air before developing chaotic curlicues about six inches up.
“Jesus, Stoney, be careful!” He replaced his cigarette to his normal, yellowed smoking fingers, raised his sunglasses and winked, something I’d never seen him do.
“It’s cool,” he said, and knocked out a smoke ring that seemed to sail up at about seventy miles per hour. He smiled beatifically at it and seemed to contemplate the beauty of the universe. “So on a non-logarithmic scale of one to ten, how handsome do you think I am?”
“Stoney—”
“No, you’re right. I should go first. I think you’re…” he seemed to scan me up and down for a few seconds. “Oh shit!” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet and pitching his cigarette butt.
“What?”
“I forgot about the yogurt!” He squared his sunglasses resolutely and sprinted towards the back door. I followed at a walk. I found him in the kitchen, stirring a half-gallon sized plastic picture of what looked like buttermilk, only without the flecks of butter.
“You’re making yogurt?” I asked.
“Oh sure. You ever been to Greece?” he answered.
“No…”
“Well, they have this way cool, far-out, kick-ass, take-no-prisoners yogurt that’s parsecs better than the jelly-sweetened stuff they sell here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. It’s just fantastic.”
“Okay…” I said.
“By experimenting with buttermilk cultures, temperatures, and times, I found I could make it pretty well even though there was nothing like it in the store. But until it stiffens you need to keep it pretty well-stirred or it will clabber. Which is cool in one way because you can make some pretty good cheese out of it then, but you have to start over on the yogurt. He stirred patiently for several more seconds, then seemed to freeze up, staring at some odd place in the middle distance. “Holy shit!”
“What?”
“Stir this for four more minutes, gently, not the way I’ve seen you beat pancake batter, then replace it in the warming compartment of this fine old stove.” He handed me the spoon and left the kitchen towards the dining room.
Okay. I did as told, listening for strange noises or indications that he was going outside again, but didn’t hear anything. After stirring for the requisite time I put the yogurt in the stove’s warming compartment and went looking for Stoney. He wasn’t anywhere to be found, but there was a new diagram on one of the blackboards:
I wasn’t sure what he was up to. There were some formulas written underneath, but I didn’t stop to look at them because I was worried about where he might have gone. I found him lying on the living room floor, drooling on a beautiful Persian rug that Mrs. W. later told me was a silk rug from Qum. His arms were outstretched and his legs were spread, so he looked like that pentagram drawing of Man by DaVinci.
“You okay?” I asked. No response. “Is this due to the figure you just wrote on the blackboard?” He lit a new cigarette off the old one even though the old one was only half gone. I brought him an ashtray from one of the end tables. He didn’t ditch the old cigarette, but held one in each hand, puffing quietly, alternating between them for his drags, but taking two drags from the long one for every one drag on the short one. Whether this was intentional only Stoney could say. I watched him in silence for a few minutes.
“You are one perceptive rectangular asshole,” he said, after a while, without looking at me.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes, yes, of course that figure reminded me of Leonardo, so I had to come outside and try it. I’m glad I did.” He took a drag off his left cigarette.
“You’re in the living room, Stoney,” I said. He ignored me.
“And the oddest part of the trip is … my clean, warm, soulful recognition that no one else in the world would have noticed that resemblance. Plus, I think you’re handsome, too, in a wiry, medium-sized kind of way.”
“Stoney—” I began.
He waved me off with his right cigarette. “I know. It embarrasses you to talk about your feelings, especially about The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. I understand.”
“That isn’t what I was going to say,” I answered.
“What were you going to say, mon petit chou?”
“Did you just call me a Brussels sprout?” I asked.
“Mon lapin, then,” he answered.
“I’m a rabbit?”
“Of course. A cute, medium-sized bunny rabbit who has an amazing predilection for math and recognizing patterns.”
“I had no idea you knew French,” I said.
“Naturellement je sais le Français, ” he answered. “In der Tat spreche ich Deutsch, auch. ”
“That sounded like German,” I said.
“Ja, Schatzi.”
“I don’t know any German,” I said.
“Sie don’t sprechen spanisch, irgendein, das ungerade ist. Aber Sie kennen Latein und Griechen, den ich nicht tue. Ich weiß, dass Sie, mein Schatz intelligent sind,” he answered.
“Not following you,” I said.
“Oh, never mind all that, Schatzi,” he said. “You were about to explain your feelings for me, but you were being … reticent.”
“No I wasn’t,” I said. He took a long drag off of his left cigarette.
“If this datura shit Clarence made me eat wasn’t so gonzo over-the-top mind-blowing I might be just as reticent as you. But fuck a frog on the Fourth of July, this stuff is insane. So what were you saying?”
“Let’s eat lunch. We still have pizza.” He propped himself up on his elbows.
“There’s pizza?” he asked.
“Yes, of course. Remember? We went to Pizza Hut Last night?”
“Is there beer?” he asked. I think if he hadn’t been wearing Ray-Ban Aviators his expression could have been recognized as intense.
“There’s a six-pack in the pantry, but it’s not cold. I caught Clarence trying to filch one last night.” Stoney leapt to his feet and pitched both buts with a simultaneous flick of the index fingers of both hands as though he were outdoors. I scrambled to retrieve them. Luckily they landed on the hardwood floor and I got them to the ashtray before they did any harm.
“Lead on Macduff. But I’ll hear naught of this eating cold pizza. The only logical way to deal with pizza leftovers is to manfully re-heat them in an oven, my gay friend Henry. Let’s get to it. Portez-moi à cette pizza que vous parlez de et je traiterai elle immédiatement. ” He marched off towards the kitchen and I followed.
He got progressively calmer as the day went on, although after lunch he claimed to be a bloodhound named Amos Moses and went sniffing through the closets upstairs. I settled in in the dining room to work through the problems Mrs. W. had left us. They were all multi-variable problems and they were tough, but there’s something inestimably appealing about working out the details of an infinite series. It’s always interesting to think about infinity. The problems all seemed similar until I realized that some of the series had sums and some did not, which was of course her clever way of teaching us to recognize the difference. After about an hour Stoney, still claiming to be named Amos Moses but now walking upright came downstairs with a box labeled “2000 piece puzzle” and a picture of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” on the front. He smiled at me and dumped the contents onto one of the tables and busied himself with turning them all right-side up and smoothing them out. After that was done he got himself a beer. I worked through the first three of the six problems Mrs. W. had left, and he steadily built the perimeter of his jigsaw puzzle. Neither of us said a word. By around midnight I’d solved all of Mrs. W’s problems and Stoney appeared to have solved about a third of his jigsaw puzzle. He had the rectangular outline al the way around, six or seven sun-like yellow objects, and a broad wavy stripe of yellow put together, but it was unclear how they’d fit together even though I’d seen the picture on the box just a few hours before.
“Stoney—” I began, in a conversational tone of voice. He jumped, startled, as if the creature from Alien had suddenly leapt out of its egg and through his visor.
“Fuck!” he shouted.
“Sorry. You’ve seemed pretty calm for the last few hours.”
“I have been! But that’s because I haven’t had fuckers yelling at me every few seconds!”
“So you’re still not okay?” I asked. He pondered his answer for a few seconds.
“Your question reveals a deep prejudice, nay hostility, against those who use drugs. You will never understand what it is like to be an oppressed minority in a non-drug-using society.”
“Ah, shit,” I said.
“What, my little cabbage?” he asked, returning his attention to his puzzle.
“I’m tired and want to go to bed.”
“Then bring me a bourbon and soda and go,” he said.
“You’re still fucked up,” I said.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I was tres clumsy when I was on the datura, and I don’t seem to be having any trouble handling these little puzzle pieces. My perceptions are a little off but I don’t seem to be having any trouble lining up the lines and colors on them. The yellows are a little intense but my reasoning appears to have returned to non-datura levels.” He fitted a small blue and white piece into a larger group of similar pieces that appeared to be one of the swirls in Van Gogh’s night sky, then suddenly wheeled back to me. “Where did that dwarf come from?” he asked.
“What dwarf?”
“The bearded dwarf in the wheelchair.”
“You said something about that, but I assumed it was the drugs,” I said. He thought about that with a semi-dubious look on his face.
“No little person of any sort in a wheelchair?” he asked.
“None.” He frowned and thought a minute more.
“Did anyone small, or with a beard, come over to sing ‘Free Bird?’” he asked.
“No. It was just you, me and Clarence until about eleven, then his mother and Ginny came by to pick him up…” I started.
“Fuck! That’s right! Clarence is missing! I never even noticed! Gack, what a terrible parent I’d be!”
“Did you just say ‘gack’?” I asked.
“You and Mrs. W. use it all the time,” he said, a little defensively. “Is it some kind of personal code?” he asked.
“No, no. You used it perfectly appropriately. I’ve just never heard anyone but Mrs. W. use that word.”
“You use it all the time.”
“Really? Are you sure?” I asked.
“Positive.”
“Okay. So you’re not going to go galloping out into the night to chase squirrels?” I asked.
“No.” He smiled and returned his attention to his puzzle. “I am unaware of any species of nocturnal squirrels.” He matched two puzzle pieces and looked back up. “And there was nobody over here in a wheelchair, or with a beard?”
“No.”
“Weird,” he said, looking back down.
“Why?”
“Because it seems like the experience was all drug. Usually drug experiences are part drug, part reality. Each informing the other.”
“(A), from my experience of you over the last ten months, I get a keen sense that drugs influence your reality experience, but no sense at all that reality influences your drug intake, and…” I began.
“Harsh,” Stoney interjected.
“(B), the guy on the Poison Control hotline indicated that people die every year from this stuff,” I sad.
“Who called Poison Control?”
“I did,” I answered.
“What’s the lethal dose?” he asked.
“No way to know. Apparently all parts of the plant are toxic. Impossible to determine what amount will kill you. Next time you take a tiny nibble and I could be singing hymns at your funeral.”
“What will you sing?” he asked.
“Whatever’s in the service.” He nodded.
“Oh, well. Go on to bed. And don’t worry, I won’t run off and do anything fucked up. It was … an interesting trip, but as I’m coming down I’m remembering it wasn’t much fun. Did I at any point climb up a tree thinking I was a cat?”
“Not that I could see.”
“So it goes without saying that I didn’t turn into a coyote.”
“No, but you really, really sounded like one,” I said.
“That’s reassuring. Go on to bed, but not before you bring me a bourbon and soda,” he said.
“Why does your drug experience lead to me serving you bourbon and soda?” I asked.
“Oh, it doesn’t, not at all,” he said.
“So why do I need to do it?” I asked, confused.
“Because I want a drink, I’m lazy, and I’m interested in this puzzle,” he said. “Particularly the pieces with yellow.” I got him a drink and went to bed.
The next morning when I came down the whole house smelled like biscuits and coffee. Still-warm bacon was draining its excess grease onto newsprint on the counter next to the stove, and Stoney was reading the Sunday Chattanooga Times sports section, resplendent in his sunglasses, jeans, a tee-shirt, and his purple bathrobe.
“Hi, bud,” he said. “Bacon biscuits and coffee comin’ up. Actually, coffee’s done. Help yourself.”
We had bacon and biscuits for breakfast. He’d made two-inch wide biscuits, which we split and buttered and turned into bacon sandwiches. Really good stuff. At the end I cleaned up, then wandered into the dining room. Stoney was sitting there staring at the blackboard where Mrs. W. had set out our six homework problems. The Starry Night puzzle was complete.
“These fuckers are hard,” he said.
“They look hard, but it’s just new limits, and then dealing with convergences and limits that increase or decrease. It kind of builds from there. So if…” and I began talking him through my solution to the first problem. He stood at a blackboard and reasoned out each step without any help from me as to the calculations, although I suggested the process at each step. It took about three hours to work through the problems this way, although it had taken me two days to work through them by myself. It felt odd. I was almost Stoney’s teacher, and I’d always been his collaborator before. He didn’t seem to notice. We were done by about one p.m. and Stoney made us bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches with some of the breakfast About five I heard the front door open and came downstairs. I found Mrs. W in the dining room staring at the blackboards.
“Hello, Henry,” she said, without looking at me. She was looking at the figure Stoney had drawn on the blackboard when he had been at his craziest the day before:
Underneath was written a formula: Area ACDA = (sorry, but blogger doesn't allow for math notation) in Stoney’s distinctive handwriting.
“Damn, he’s good,” she said.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
“Stoney’s given us an elegant new solution to the volume of a cylinder problem we started with at the beginning of the summer. He’s turned it upside down, for some reason, but the math is easy enough to apply to the other part of the circle.” She then turned to the blackboards on which Stoney had worked out all of the homework problems. She looked back at me with a frown. “What happened? Did you have something else to do?”
“No, ma’am,” I said.
“Honey, this is strange. It’s not like you to let somebody else do all the work. What happened? Have you reached the end of your string?” she asked, looking at me, worried.
“Hey, Mrs. W.,” said Stoney, walking into the room with some kind of drink in hand, which he immediately handed to Mrs. W. “I think I heard most of that. Henry figured all of that out while I was messing around with Clarence, then he walked me through it yesterday. It looks like my handwriting, but it’s really all Henry. Another drink? I’ve made a decent gazpacho and really, I think if we have some cheese and bread with that, we’ll be good. Wine?”
“Where is Clarence?” she asked.
“His mother and Ginny came to puck him up yesterday. She said they would bring him back here Tuesday, if that’s okay.” She nodded.
We had a fun night, but about a week later Mrs. W pulled me aside and said “Henry, all of the upstairs closets have been re-organized. All of the fragrant objects in each closet have been gathered together. What happened? My sister said you and Stoney were acting really oddly when she came to pick up Clarence.”
“I’m sorry, but this makes no sense to me. Fragrant objects? Like what?”
“Cedar blocks, lavender wands. An old box of Constant Comment tea. All kinds of stuff. But the closets have been tidied and everything aromatic gathered in one corner.” I suspected this had to do with Stoney’s canine impulses while he was on the Datura, but couldn’t make sense of it. I tried to think it through but got nowhere. “While I was at the bridge tournament, were the rules of the house violated?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “Not as I understand them. Nothing illegal took place.” I was thinking this through.
“Henry?”
“No, ma’am, not at all, but next time we do this I’ll suggest a refinement to the rules.” She thought, then she smiled.
“Fair enough.”
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