Lukiv

QUIBILS AND QUIRKS©
(the original text as serialized in The Cariboo Observer)

Dan Lukiv, M.Ed.
English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca

LAST EPISODE/CHAPTER 36: The floor of the Town Hall caved in; nearby Dr. Dewknob rescued Miss Snapdragon first.

            Next came Betsy. Pop! Then the mayor. Pop!
            But Arthur and the baker were much harder to rescue because they each had a broken leg. The pain made them moan.
            Dr. Dewknob, trying not to giggle, shook his head as he stood before the mud-covered, rescued four.
            “Look at my dress!” Betsy said. “And my hair!”
            “My leg!” Arthur said, leaning against Betsy.
            “Ah, shut up!” the butcher said, leaning against Arthur. “Do you think you’re the only one with a busted leg?”
            “Heads,” the mud-dripping mayor said, apparently unhurt and delighted.
            Betsy helped Arthur and the doctor helped the butcher hobble to Dr. Dewknob’s office. As for the mayor, he followed, prancing along and babbling things like, “Goo, goo, goo. Yum, yum, yum. Da-da, da-da, da-da dum.”
            Betsy left her husband in the doctor’s care. Then she took the mayor to her apartment to clean him and her up.
            Amid much groaning, the doctor got busy, setting both broken legs and wrapping them in plaster-soaked gauze. Once the casts had set, he asked, “Shall I autograph these? Ha! Ha! Ha! To Tweedledee and Tweedledum?”
            “Maybe you’d like another black eye,” the butcher said from his narrow bed.
            “My, my,” Dr. Dewknob said. “Did you eat a worm?”

            “If it wasn’t for that blasted Snapdragon, we wouldn’t be here now,” the butcher said from his bed. “This is all her fault!”
            “Oh?” the doctor said. “Don’t you think you wise men should have fixed up the Town Hall long ago?” He chuckled. “Imagine. Five grown ups plunging into the bowels of the earth.”
            “Well, Miss Snapdragon was the cause of that quibil invasion this morning. I’m sure of it,” the butcher said. “She ought to be tarred and feathered.”
            “Nasty, nasty.” The doctor shook his head. “You’re going to get high blood pressure. You could have a stroke and end up a vegetable.”
            “Actually,” Arthur said, “there was a problem at school.” He squirmed in his very soiled “white” gown, trying to get comfortable on his narrow bed on wheels. “Miss Snapdragon offended Hooper Quirk and sent him running home today. You know what she’s like.”
            “Picking on the teacher. Attacking quibils. You both should be ashamed of yourselves,” Dr. Dewknob said.
            “Yeah? And you enjoy the smell of quibils?” the butcher asked. “Remember: you looked pretty green around the gills yourself.”
            “That’s no excuse,” the doctor said. “We share this valley with those quibils. They’re our neighbours.”
            Arthur looked thoughtful. “You know, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 39: The butcher decides that the quibils should have their necks broken.

            “The point IS,” the butcher said, “Miss Snapdragon insulted Hooper. The quibils invaded out of anger. You know as well as I do that quibils and Quirks have been friends for years.”
            “So they invaded?” Dr. Dewknob asked sarcastically.
                                                                     ***
            Arthur and the butcher, their armpits already hurting, clumped on crutches along Main Street, heading for their homes.
            “Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” the butcher said. “Who does that Dewknob think he is?”
            “I feel silly,” Arthur said. “This gown’s drafty.
            “Yeah? Well, I think we ought to teach those quibils a lesson. We ought to break their necks.”
            “You ARE in a nasty mood, aren’t you?” Arthur said, hobbling along in front of the wrecked museum. “Anyway, I don’t think quibils have necks.”
            “That’s their problem.” The butcher snorted. He spit. “Earlier tonight I looked outside my bathroom window. I thought I saw a quibil hiding near the mayor’s house. I was downwind, and yet I couldn’t smell anything. So I figured my mind was playing tricks on me.”
            “The doctor said we should be ashamed of ourselves,” Arthur said. “I think he was right. I don’t feel good at all about the way I acted. I smacked one big fellow into a barrel. He almost drowned.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 40: More broken legs, and a baby bottle for the mayor.

            “What have you got for brains?” the butcher said. “Sawdust? They’re quibils.”
            “We went too far,” Arthur said.
            “Stop interrupting me. Don’t you find it strange that I saw a quibil, but there was no smell? And now the mayor is an idiot?”
            “Mid-life crisis,” Arthur said.
            “Funny!” the baker said. They were approaching—awkwardly—the professor’s unsightly house. It had missing shingles like missing teeth. Brush had invaded the yard. “But I’m not laughing. I figure that quibil I saw earlier, near the mayor’s house, did something to him. I think they’re a lot more dangerous than we ever thought.”
            “You should write horror stories,” Arthur said.
            The butcher didn’t have time to reply. Both fell into an unmarked hole that had been dug that morning to expose a leaky waterline.
            “Ahhhhhhhh!”
            “Heeeeeeeelp!”
            At the bottom, in a heap of mud, their arms, legs, and crutches tangled up. Now the butcher and baker each had two broken legs.
                                                                   ***
            Dorothy and her mother, Betsy, didn’t know yet about Arthur’s new broken leg.
            “I’m glad Daddy will be okay,” Dorothy said. Wearing a pink nighty, and holding a baby bottle filled with milk for the mayor, she skipped into the living-room.

            Betsy, after a long shower, sat on a knobby couch, snuggled up in a terry cloth kimono.
            “How very strange,” she thought, studying the mayor (she’d sponged dirt off his face and hands and clothes while he’d kept calling her “Ma-ma”). “A full grown man in a dirty suit,” she continued, “sucking his thumb, rolling about, grunting and cooing.”
            “What!” Betsy said. “Dorothy! What are you doing?”
            Dorothy handed the mayor a baby bottle, and giggled. “He looks hungry.”
            The mayor instantly gave up his thumb for his bottle. He lay on his back, sucking, his fat cheeks popping in and out.
            “There,” Dorothy said. “Should I also get him my teddy bear?”
            “If anybody sees him...what a disgrace.”
            “I think he looks soooo cute.” Dorothy darted from the living-room to her bedroom. She returned, carrying a teddy bear that she gave to the mayor.
            He hugged it, pulled the bottle from his mouth, and mumbled, “Heads.”
            “That’s the teddy Uncle Hamburger gave me before he died,” Dorothy said, sitting beside Betsy.
            “Your father thinks he fell into a ravine in the hills,” Betsy said as she brushed her wet hair. “He loved to hike, and he always spoke about building a time machine.”

            “I remember Uncle Hamburger a bit,” Dorothy said. “He was skinny and had a wild beard.”
            “He was a slob,” Betsy said. “But he was my brother. I cared for him, and I miss him.”
            “He was my only uncle,” Dorothy said.
            Betsy stopped brushing her thick hair. “He was a lovable dope,” she said, watching the mayor hug Dorothy’s teddy bear.”
            “Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Mum, if we found out he wasn’t dead?”
            “What? Really, Dorothy. We have a serious problem here. We have to do something,” Betsy said.
            “Oh! The bottle’s empty.” Dorothy grabbed the bottle from the mayor’s hand, and then she ran to the fridge.
            While Dorothy, at the fridge, refilled the baby bottle with milk for the mayor, Miss Snapdragon, in her dark bedroom, climbed into bed. She felt enraged and exhausted. But at least she felt clean since she’d bathed away Town Hall muck.
            Feeling clean, however, didn’t seem to help for long. She felt so angry she wanted to scream.
            Like a spooked cat, she leapt out of bed. She hated children, and she hated Porksville. It was time to quit her job!
            At her wobbly desk near the warm furnace, she sat, shivered, and typed alongside a hurricane lamp.
            Dear Morons:
                        Did oink-oinks name this wretched place?

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 43: Read the rest of Miss Snapdragon’s “I quit” letter; she leaves town “forever.”

            Dear Morons:
            Did oink-oinks name this wretched place? Is there nobody in this godforsaken valley with a brain larger than a walnut?
            You people make me sick, and I hate my job. Catherine The Not-So-Great and Joan of Bark can marry Bob Peanut and go straight to jail for polygamy. I don’t care! I quit!
            Send my belongings (don’t steal anything) in my trunk to Krabb Cove.

            Good riddance, and not yours,
            Miss Snapdragon

            Quickly, she dressed into wool pants, a sweater, and mismatched socks. One sock was red, the other pink.
            She wrapped her hair into a lump, using bobby pins. From the bedroom closet to the living-room, she dragged a trunk. It had been a hope chest. She packed.
            After putting on and zipping up her Indian jacket, she hurried to the front door. Outside, she used a thumbtack to post her letter on the wooden letterbox.
            As she pushed the thumbtack into the wood, an owl flew across the moon. In a cherry tree, a crow cawed.
            A minute later, wind stung her eyes as she pedaled her bicycle towards the garbage dump, racing like a bird from a fire.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 44: Miss Snapdragon speeds by hosshoppers feasting at the dump.

            Miss Snapdragon, puffing hard, sped by the garbage dump, and one hosshopper (hosshoppers look like giant, bug-eyed, pig-faced rabbits that stand upright like kangaroos) stopped chewing a mouldy apple.
            “Ain’t that the teacher?” he asked, standing on a mound of smelly garbage.
            Another hosshopper, tearing through a bag, said, “Looks like she’s in a hurry.”
            “I hear she’s a real bear-trap,” a third said, holding a brown lettuce up to the moon. He added, “Mmmmm” and then ate the whole head.
            Miss Snapdragon began the long climb out of Beaver Valley. But her knees already felt as if they might pop off. And to complete her escape, she still had to travel many switch backs: first, up leaf-clad hills to Hornet Flats, and second, down barren hills to Krabb Cove.
            Before reaching Hornet Flats, however, ropes of hair fell into her eyes. As her right hand tried to shove her hair back, her left hand over steered. Down a rocky slope she plunged. Black trees and bushes soared by. Her behind ached from bouncing on the metal seat. The chain rattled like a jackhammer. Hair swirled about her face. Her teeth chattered so hard that she lost a filling.
            Down! Down! Down!

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 45: Miss Snapdragon crashes. Lost Hooper—in Professor Hamburger’s time (and space) machine—lands on a snowy hillside.

CHAPTER 45: MISS SNAPDRAGON CRASHES, AND
HOOPER LANDS—AND LANDS

            At the bottom of the hillside, she raced out of the forest. To her surprise, she headed straight for her house, ripping through lilac bushes, bouncing across the lumpy yard, crashing on the front steps, landing on her rear end, and ending up facing the letter she’d posted on her mailbox.
                                                                  ***
            As for Hooper:
            You’ll likely remember: He’d left Booger Hill, disappearing in Professor Hamburger’s time machine. Then he landed in future Porksville during the quibil attack:
          A sword-waving quibil, with murderous eyes, terrified Hooper. “I’ll lop off his orange head!” the quibil exclaimed.
          Inside the time machine, Hooper pressed a green button beside a dial that read “1925.” The time machine began to bang again.
            “Wait!” the quibil said, standing in front of the time machine. “Aren’t you Hooper? Yes, you are, aren’t you?” The last words Hooper heard the quibil shout were, “Come back!”
          The cockpit filled with that weird rainbow. Hooper’s cheeks jiggled. “I’m no coward,” he said, irritated because his heart raced and he felt faint.
            Then the rainbow dissolved like rising steam. Coloured lights reappeared. Bangs faded away. Hooper feared quibils would attack him with swords.
***
            Instead of quibils, however, he saw a leaning shack that, tarpapered and rhomboid, stood on a snowy hillside.

The plywood door swung open. A gangly man jumped outside: “Jumping jelly beans!” He pulled a toque down over his ears. “You’re an alien, aren’t ya?” He approached Hooper. His voice boomed. “You’re an alien in a spaceship!” He had no front teeth. “Jumping bananas! It’s an orange creature from outer space!”
            Then he tripped on a chunk of firewood. In a flurry of arms, legs, and snow, he twirled down the hill, turning into a human snowball. He followed a gully, like a train speeding along a track.
            Cold air stung Hooper’s cheeks. He zippered his wind breaker to his neck, watching how quickly the snowball rolled away—
            A crash echoed through Beaver Valley. Then Hooper spoke: “Booger Jimm?”
                                                                        ***
                    “This is really great!” Hooper thought, stepping into the tarpapered shack. “What a wonderful day!”
            He began to sweat in the heat of the cast-iron furnace. He unzipped his wind breaker, and, feeling flushed and lightheaded, gazed nervously around the cabin.
            He saw a heap of dirty clothes, in a corner, that almost buried a sleigh.
            But something in the heap moved. A brown face peaked through a hole in an oil-stained shirt. “The thing” squealed, and Hooper jumped.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 47: Meet “the thing.” And: Can Hooper use the time machine to save Booger Jimm?.

            Sweating Hooper saw something move in the heap of clothes again. A pant leg shot up. The creature flew out of the leg, like a missile, landing on Hooper’s chest.
            Hooper gazed down: It was a rat with grey whiskers that twitched and black eyes that stared. He decided to grab its tail and fling it away. Then he decided not to. He decided to grab its neck and break it. Instead, he screamed, and that made the rat screech.
            It jumped off Hooper’s chest and scurried back to the pile of clothes.
            Hooper shuddered.
            Then he noticed, on a warped table, between dirty plates and pots, a scrap of paper that read “TUESDAY” in clumsy writing.
            That word (his mother had taught him to read the days of the week) gave him an idea.
            Hooper ran out of the shack, heading for the time machine. Snow crunched under his feet.
            “You killed Booger!” called a crow flying by. “You killed Booger!”
            Hooper, at the controls, glanced at Booger’s death path that led down to what had to be Porksville. He turned a dial that read “TUESDAY” to “MONDAY,” and then he pushed the green button beside the dial that read “1925.”
            Banging. That rainbow. Then halfway through Hooper’s “Yippee!,” he was gone.

            The time machine landed, and the tarpapered shack reappeared on the hillside. Hooper expected to see Booger barge out.
            “Jumping hosshoppers!”
            Hooper, still seated, swung around. There stood Booger on packed snow. He carried an axe over one shoulder, and he wore that same toque.
            “I’m not an alien,” Hooper said, amid the flashing lights of the time machine.
            “Nobody said ya was.”
            “You were going to,” Hooper said. “You see, I came here tomorrow in Professor Hamburger’s time machine. You rolled down the hill and died. I came back to today to warn you and save your life.”
            “You’re orange,” Booger said.
            “I’m not an alien.”
            “This is a spaceship, isn’t it?” Booger said, pointing his axe at the time machine. “I’ve got an alien right in my own backyard!” Then he slipped.
            “Watch it!”
            “Whoa!” Booger exclaimed. Up flew his axe. Then, down, down—again.
                                                                    ***
            Booger, who had hair as coarse as pine needles, pressed his toque stuffed with snow to his forehead, and moaned. “My head hurts tarble.”
            “I’m sorry about your lump,” Hooper said. They sat at the messy table in the hot shack and drank strawberry tea. “But I’m glad that stump stopped you. You would have rolled all the way to Porksville and crashed into the museum. That would have killed you again.”

Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999 by Dan Lukiv. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

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