Scribes’ Tribe Scribblings

Even at this early hour, the town of Kliklak was a study in mixed emotions about this latest display of unorthodox behavior. Word spread rapidly, as it can in a small town, and people’s reactions ranged from outrage to laughter to total indifference. No one knew quite what to do, or, indeed, if anything needed to be done.

Kliklak was an out-of-the-way village in the Pacific Northwest whose name, according to a noted university etymologist, derived from an ancient Koogwump word, meaning, “Where the hell are we?”

The town lay on Bald Beaver River, where its main sources of income were from a lumber mill, some hunting and fishing, and the National Center for the Study of Centers, an important think tank generously funded by the federal government, courtesy of Congressman the Honorable Parsifal Earwig, a local boy made good.

Johanna Torkelsson was one of Kliklak’s leading citizens. As the town’s postmistress and manager of its only general store, she didn’t really care what other people did on their own time, as long as it didn’t interfere with her breakfast. Her philosophy of life was crisp and to the point, the gist of it being “so what?”

Thus, one morning when she heard her name being shouted as she prepared her breakfast, Johanna was disinclined to turn the heat down under the skillet in which three eggs were frying. She loved to watch the rich golden eyes thickening in sizzling bacon grease, her nasal passages caressed with the seductive aromas of smoked meat, cooking egg yolks, and melting hog fat. They represented all that was good in life―predictable, and tasty.

Consequently, she scowled when she heard her neighbor yelling at her through the kitchen’s screen door. It was six-thirty, and her eggs were not quite ready.

“Jo! Jo! You’ve got to come see this,” Mavis Mudd shouted. “Get out here! Look! Up in your tree!” Mavis pointed toward the huge Douglas fir that stood in Johanna’s backyard.

“I’m fixing breakfast!” Johanna protested. “Can’t it wait?”

“Well, that weirdo bunch is at it again, and unless you think the entire town cares more than you do about your tree and this nonsense…” Mavis’ voice trailed off in indignation. Johanna stared at her eggs, the yolks beginning to harden in the bubbling grease.

“Crap!” She laid down her spatula and turned off the burner. “This had better be good.”

“That weirdo bunch,” as Mavis called them, were three rather unconventional people, two men and a young woman, who had appeared in Kliklak several weeks earlier. They moved into a deserted trapper’s cabin and began to make sure everyone knew they were there to protect all the trees from Bald Beaver River to the Pacific coast. That, the citizens of Kliklak agreed, took in one helluva lot of trees.

Johanna, in her dual role in town, had occasion to meet the three when they wandered in for supplies. She was convinced by their looks, the strange mail they received once in a while, and their addiction to coffee, that they were probably either from San Francisco or Seattle.
Once, in a joking mood, she asked the man who appeared to be the leader if they had run out of trees to protect in California. He merely stared, expressionless, before replying through a mouthful of cheddar crackers, “I am one with the world,” as if no other explanation were necessary.

He was a spare man of medium height, indeterminate age, large soulful eyes, long dark brown hair, and an enormous appetite for Cheez-It crackers. Except for the Cheez-Its, he resembled the historical portrayals of Jesus Christ. He also insisted that he be called “Attis,” although his mailed catalogs were always addressed to Willard Willingham, III. Johanna took a perverse delight in calling him “Willard.”

“Here’s your mail, Willard.”

The man would pull his tie-dyed T-shirt more tightly around his bony shoulders. “I prefer,” he sniffed, “that you address me as ‘Attis’.”

“Ok, Willard,” she would answer. “Whatever you say.”

And then she would chuckle as, indignant, he departed the store with six slices of bologna and a family-sized box of Cheez-Its tucked under an arm. The other man, lanky, and unwashed, was known in town simply as “Tool.” No one knew his real name. He didn’t receive any mail.

He was just “Tool.”

Kliklak was ambivalent about him. The concensus was that Tool, despite his aromatic presence, was relatively harmless, except when he was spiking trees or dumping piles of rotted sawdust on the steps of city hall.

The woman who accompanied the men wore necklaces of unidentified dried fungi, dressed in ankle-length flour-sack dresses, and smiled a lot. She preferred to be called “Cybele,” but it wasn’t long before unsympathetic locals corrupted the pronunciation into “Sowbelly.”

Johanna didn’t trust Cybele, or Sowbelly. There was just something about her―about her waist-length hair festooned with fronds of fern, her perpetual smile and ever-shifting eyes. Johanna became convinced that Cybele, not Willard, was actually the ringleader. It was she who had Attis and Tool chain her to the town’s only traffic control sign so that the word “STOP” appeared directly over her head. The fact that she was nude also served to stop traffic.

Because of this and other bizarre antics, the three were constantly in trouble with the local law, namely the town marshal who was fed up, and with Kliklak’s justice of the peace who shared the marshal’s feelings.

As a result, the three spent much of their time in the town’s small lockup or doing “community service,” neither of which deterred them from their avowed mission to save the forests.

*****

As Johanna stepped down into her backyard with the smell of bacon and eggs still filling her nostrils, she was surprised to see many of her neighbors and a few other townfolk gathered on her property in a huddled group. They were all looking up at her fir tree where “Attis,” aka Willard Willingham, III, had bound himself with strips of rags in a loose representation of a crucifixion. He was wearing only a rather dirty piece of Hudson Bay blanket as a loincloth.

For the first time, Johanna became aware of a strange acoustic accompaniment to the scene. Tool was sitting cross-legged at the base of the tree thumping an incoherent rythym on a home-made drum with a stick. The drum was an empty five-gallon paint can with a piece of plastic tarp stretched over it. It sounded remarkably like an empty five-gallon paint can with a piece of plastic tarp stretched over it.

Cybele stood to one side, shaking a rattle of pebbles inside a soup can and chanting a paean to the earth.

From high up in the branches, Attis shouted in a theatrical voice, “ The earth is first!”
Johanna elbowed her way through the crowd and stood under the big fir with hands on hips, face reddening.

“Willard!” she shouted. “Willard! What the hell are you doing in my tree?”

“I’m making a statement!” he answered.

“Well, go make a statement somewhere else. You’re on my property!”

“I am one with the environment,” Attis insisted.

“How long do you plan to be ‘one with the environment’ in my tree?”

Cybele was singing, and her soaring soprano inspired Tool to new heights of percussion. In a transport of enthusiasm, he broke his pounding stick and everything stopped while Cybele helped him find a new one.

Someone shouted up at the self-crucified Attis. “Hey, Willard! Hope you don’t stay up there too long. That loincloth could get pretty heavy.”

Attis ignored the chuckles, while Cybele chanted, “O, Master, O, Father, All is one, one is all.”

Her incantation was answered with an emotional moan from up in the tree. “Eloi, Eloi, tekel upharsin!”

Johanna looked at the Methodist minister who was standing beside her. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“I think,” Reverend Goldberg opined, “it means he’s dumber than we thought.”

In the strangeness of the moment, the crowd failed to notice the gray cloud that had formed between two nearby mountain peaks. It was growing larger and was now moving toward Kliklak.

Tool pounded on his homemade drum with increased vigor. Cybele’s chants grew louder. The cloud drifted closer. Johanna yelled in utter frustration. Hack Harris, the town marshal, was threatening bodily harm to Willard Willingham, III, if he didn’t come down immediately. Attis cried out, “Save our trees!”

At that precise moment, a blinding apocalyptic flash blazed out of the sky, and a blast of ear-shattering thunder shook the ground. Many in the crowd were blown off their feet. Smoke filled the air, and the reek of incinerated wood smothered the romantic smell of fried eggs and bacon.

*********

For many months thereafter, those who actually witnessed the incident that came to be known as “The Miracle of Kliklak” were still hard-pressed to describe it. The people closest to the tree were thrown to the ground by the lightning strike and almost all were temporarily blinded by the intensity of the flash.

When the smoke cleared, they found Tool and Cybele sprawled unconscious some distance away. The spots where she and Tool had been were now two big patches of blackened grass. Johanna was wailing about the fate of her backyard when someone cried,

“Where’s Willard?”

Everyone paused and looked up at the shattered tree where they expected to see Willard’s toasted remains, but all they saw were a couple of torn rags hanging from a limb. Baffled, they searched the grounds and discovered only the grimy loincloth lying at the base of the still-smoldering tree. Willard Willingham, III, was nowhere to be found.

The self-styled nature god, Attis, he of the regal air and appetite for Cheez-Its, had simply vanished.

Word spread rapidly, and Kliklak was suddenly under the public microscope as investigators of every stripe descended upon the small village.

Mystics, psychics, professors of paranormal phenomena, and several charasmatic preachers appeared in Johanna’s backyard. The mysterious disappearance baffled even the most expert among them. Rumors about the “miracle” became wild speculation, most of which landed on the internet where it was quickly attributed to a devious plot by the current administration in Washington or global warming.

Cybele and Tool, recovered from what were only minor injuries, became instant celebrities. They also became the target of professional interrogators who vigorously questioned the two.

“What did you see?” the Special Case leader asked Tool.

“Hell, man, I didn’t see nothin’. I was unconscious.”

Marshal Hack Harris concurred. “So what else is new?” he snarled.

Cybele was asked to record her singing and chanting for analysis by paranormal experts, which she agreed to do only if copies of the tapes would be sent out as demos to a number of record producers and reality shows.

Kliklak’s economy boomed. More and more tourists came to see the site of “The Miracle.” Pilgrims placed candles around the base of the big dead tree and spent time in quiet meditation. The influx of visitors forced some radical changes in town. Rose’s Coffee and Bait Shop now accomodated gifts and souvenirs made in China. Main Street threatened to become a strip mall.

For her part, Johanna Torkelsson profited hugely. Aggravated by the uninvited traffic who wanted to see the “Miracle Tree,” she began charging for the privilege. With the assistance of Mavis Mudd, who sold tickets, she was soon able to resign her postmistress job and pass the management of the general store on to a newcomer named Walton.

She turned her Victorian home into a profitable Bed and Breakfast, offering a morning menu featuring fried eggs and bacon. One room of the house was made into a small museum featuring Attis’ soiled loincloth, the torn rags from the tree, Tool’s drum, Cybele’s homemade rattle, and a partially opened box of Cheez-Its. There was, of course, an additional five-dollar charge to see these icons.

Over the room’s doorway, Johanna posted a hand-lettered sign with the somber inscription,

“He Was One With The Environment.”

–Jerry Swingle