Johnny America

 

Wal­ly

by

Illustration of the lower torso an legs of an alligator wearing a woman’s dress and heeled shoes.

A man be­came very pas­sion­ate about pulling weeds from his back­yard gar­den. For a long time he’d nev­er pulled a sin­gle weed, but his wife had been com­plain­ing that he was use­less around the house and just to prove her wrong, he went out one morn­ing to tend to the gar­den, there­by dis­cov­er­ing that noth­ing is quite as sat­is­fy­ing as yank­ing an un­want­ed shoot, sprout, creep­er, or bush right out of the soil — es­pe­cial­ly when you get it by the roots— and toss­ing it aside like so much chaff. And by the way, when I say this man be­came pas­sion­ate about pulling weeds, I mean he re­al­ly be­came pas­sion­ate about pulling weeds. For in­stance, in or­der to deal with a hand­ful of but­ter­fly bush­es that had been left un­tend­ed so long their stems had turned wood­en, he in­vest­ed in a bat­tery-op­er­at­ed hack­saw with which, in the midst of saw­ing down the afore­men­tioned eye­sores, he man­aged to lop off one of his own fin­gers, and all he did was shrug and say, “I guess that’s gone,” and go right on saw­ing away, which was all well and good since it wasn’t even a par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant fin­ger, but then, a cou­ple of weeks lat­er, a whole hand popped up out of the ground right in the area in which the dis­con­nect­ed dig­it had dropped.

“I’ve got to pluck this mon­stros­i­ty,” the man said when he saw it there. 

“No!” cried the hand. “Please! I want to live!”

“Hmm,” said the man (since that was what he al­ways said when he was mulling some­thing over). And then: “I’ll tell you what — I’ll let you be if you promise not to repli­cate and spread. I can’t have a gar­den full of hands on my hands.”

“It’s a deal,” said the hand.

“Then shake on it,” replied the man.

The hand was more than will­ing to com­ply, since shak­ing on it was ac­tu­al­ly one of the on­ly things it could do, but the man dou­ble-crossed the gullible ex­trem­i­ty; in­stead of shak­ing it, he yanked it right out of the ground and tossed it on­to the com­post pile with­out so much as a sor­ry about this, friend.

The  big­ger prob­lem, how­ev­er, was that no mat­ter how many weeds the man pulled, it seemed there were al­ways more weeds to be pulled, a phe­nom­e­non for which there is an ob­vi­ous ex­pla­na­tion — noth­ing tech­ni­cal­ly dis­tin­guish­es what’s not a weed from what is a weed oth­er than whether or not one looks up­on it as a weed, and in his pas­sion for pulling weeds the man had come to look up­on every­thing that hadn’t yet been pulled as, pre­cise­ly in­so­far as he pas­sion­ate­ly de­sired to pull it, yet an­oth­er weed. In this man­ner, he even­tu­al­ly emp­tied the gar­den of its con­tents al­to­geth­er, in so do­ing turn­ing it from a gar­den in­to a big old mud pit. 

“Now what are we go­ing to do?” grum­bled the man’s wife when she saw it. “No­body wants a big old mud pit be­hind their house. Our prop­er­ty val­ue is go­ing to plummet!” 

“Hmm,” said the man. “But what if that big old mud pit wasn’t ac­tu­al­ly a big old mud pit?”

“How could a big old mud pit not be a big old mud pit?”

“Leave it to me.” With that, the man head­ed straight for the near­est live­stock store and bought him­self a six­pack of pigs. “Check it out,” he said to his wife af­ter de­posit­ing them in the for­mer gar­den. “Now it’s not a mud pit — it’s a pigsty. And con­sid­er­ing the way peo­ple are so in­to back­yard farm an­i­mals these days, our prop­er­ty val­ue is prob­a­bly go­ing to skyrocket!”

While his log­ic may have been bul­let­proof, it on­ly took un­til the fol­low­ing morn­ing for the man to re­al­ize he couldn’t stand that dis­gust­ing snuf­fling sound pigs con­stant­ly make. So, one by one, he loaded the pas­sel of pork­ers in­to the car and drove them back to the live­stock store.

“Noth­ing do­ing,” de­clared the pro­pri­etor when he saw him am­ble through the door, six­pack of pigs in tow. “Like it says on the sign, re­turns will on­ly be ac­cept­ed when the mer­chan­dise is in its orig­i­nal con­di­tion. These pigs, mean­while, are clear­ly all cov­ered in mud.”

“Damnit,” said the man. “Now what am I sup­posed to do? I could put them in a pil­low­case and beat them against the side of a tree un­til they stopped mov­ing, but I’m pret­ty sure that would go against my prin­ci­ples as a ded­i­cat­ed vegetarian.”

“You’re a ded­i­cat­ed vegetarian?”

“I sure am.”

“One hun­dred per­cent vegetarian?”

“If not more!”

Well, all this talk of veg­e­tar­i­an­ism got the pro­pri­etor of the live­stock store think­ing that the man’s dis­sat­is­fac­tion with his porcine pur­chase might be just the op­por­tu­ni­ty he’d been seek­ing to rid him­self of a cer­tain op­por­tunis­tic car­ni­vore he’d ac­ci­den­tal­ly or­dered from his whole­saler the pre­vi­ous fall, and which had since then eat­en nine­ty per­cent of his rab­bits and no few­er than one goat. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and re­treat­ed to the store­room, re­turn­ing mo­men­tar­i­ly with an al­li­ga­tor tug­ging ea­ger­ly at the end of a re­tractable dog leash. “As I was say­ing ear­li­er,” he told the man, “I’m not go­ing to be able to give you a re­fund for those mud­dy pigs of yours. How­ev­er, I would be will­ing to take them as an even ex­change for old Wal­ly, here.”

“Hmm,” said the man. “Okay, why the hell not? I’ve heard al­li­ga­tors ac­tu­al­ly make great companions!”

And in the weeks that fol­lowed, Wal­ly more than lived up to this rep­u­ta­tion. Among the many ac­tiv­i­ties he and the man who’d ex­changed him for six pigs en­gaged in to­geth­er dur­ing that hap­py time were:

  1. Go­ing to the movies
  2. Swim­ming
  3. Hik­ing
  4. Parcheesi 
  5. Watch­ing TV
  6. Prank call­ing num­bers se­lect­ed at ran­dom from the phone­book and ask­ing who­ev­er an­swered if their re­frig­er­a­tor was running
  7. Smok­ing Dad Grass-brand CBD cigarettes 
  8. Be­com­ing frus­trat­ed at­tempt­ing to learn the cello
  9. Col­lab­o­rat­ing on con­tem­po­rary rewrites of tra­di­tion­al folktales
  10. Elec­tric boogaloo 

Then one day, Wal­ly dis­ap­peared. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous with this dis­ap­pear­ance, the man’s wife un­der­went some pe­cu­liar changes. To be­gin with, her skin, which had pre­vi­ous­ly been gener­i­cal­ly Cau­casian, turned scaly and green, and her teeth grew sev­er­al cen­time­ters in length and in ad­di­tion ap­peared to have be­come as sharp as dag­gers. More­over, when the man asked her whether she’d seen his miss­ing croc­o­dil­ian pal, rather than an­swer­ing with the reg­u­lar hu­man words she’d al­ways em­ployed in the past, she in­stead let out one of those loud, throaty roars, al­so known as “chumpfs,” that al­li­ga­tors com­mon­ly em­ploy as a mat­ing call.

For a time, fol­low­ing these changes, their mar­riage con­tin­ued on as strong as ever. Then one day, the man disappeared. 

Filed under Fiction on November 22nd, 2024

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Hazi Smith wrote:

The il­lus­tra­tion makes me feel a lit­tle… tingly. Is that wrong? Fun read.

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