DUMBO'S BEAT YEARS

1.
Baa baa
Black Sheep. Have you any
wool?
No,
For I am an elephant.

2.
Incy-Wincy Spider went
up
the
water
spout
Down came the rain and
washed poor Incy
out
Out came the sunshine
and an Elephant came
through the
window
And drowned that spider.

3.
Little Jack Horner sat
in the
corner
Eating his Christmas pie.
He stuck
in
his thumb
And pulled out
An Elephant
And said,
"I didn't realise quite how big
this pie was when
I bought it, nor that it would
cause me to lose
my signet ring. My
brother gave me that ring.
Just before
he died."

4.
Old King Cole was
a merry old
soul.
And a merry old soul
was he.
He called for
his
pipe, and he called
for his bowl.
And before long, he saw elephants
dancing
In pink and purple lines.

ALIGNMENT

The line was so long, Frank joined it just from some ingrained sense of participation. It was like one minute he was watching the line—which seemed to snake all the way around two blocks—and the next minute he was in it, with three people already behind him. No one seemed to be complaining. Every few minutes, just as Frank had the feeling that maybe he shouldn't be in the line, the person in front of him would shuffle forward a few steps, and a small spark of curiosity would keep Frank's mind from wandering too far. Besides, it was a nice day, fair weather, gentle breeze—why shouldn't he be standing in line. And it wasn't as if the line was full of undesirables. There were many people in suits and smart blouses, many with headphones, tapping away a rhythm with a finger on their hip. If they were happy to wait, why couldn't Frank? When the hunger came, when he looked up and saw that the light had faded from the sky, Frank just shrugged, shuffled forward, waited.

CATGUTS

That summer, I travelled to Czechoslovakia to chase down catguts. I’d read that the best, the most vibrant violin strings were made from the intestines of animals that were sick and ill-fed in life. You got tough, I discovered, after you died. I arrived in Plzeň, a city I knew only from the beer, and, perhaps inevitably, the weight of a bright blue sky led me to a dark, stained-glass pub.

Word had already got around, I suppose, that I was in search of the perfect string. For those who still bothered to look at CD covers, or huddled around the right corners of tiny clubs at certain times of the night, my face may have been familiar. It was the hair, usually. I had already shaken off a documentary crew in Prague. They’d caught me coming out of a hotel and bolted from their seats like Christmas shoppers. They’d been following a TV chef around Europe and needed fresh angles. I’d had to slide over the bonnet of a car to lose them.

And now, here I was, one leg up at the bar, pushing back steins of a local fruity beer, waiting out for leftovers from farm animals crafted up by the arthritic hands of a fallen master. Life was bloody good.