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| No News from Doodlebug Island
by William F. Jordan It was Wednesday and I had just finished a first draft of an editorial I planned to run in the next issue of the Doodlebug Island Run-on, my weekly newspaper, when I noticed that Cassandra had finished her bowl of milk and was starting in on my coffee.
“Miss C,” I said scoldingly, “you room and board here free of charge without so much as freshening your own litter box or causing the mice any trouble, but I draw the line when you insinuate your whiskered muzzle into my food and drink. Now, scram before I forget you’re socially well connected and make earmuffs out of you.”
With a condescending flick of her tail, Cassandra jumped down from my desk and strolled over to the fireplace where she curled up before the fire, stretching each leg luxuriously while she groomed herself.
“I hate to say it, old girl, but you’re about as useful as a Republican member of Congress working on health-care reform,” I chided. “No wonder cats develop hair balls with all that licking.” But, if she was aware of the sarcasm, she gave no sign of it but went right on primping and preening as if there were a feline society grand review commencing immediately and she the star of it.
About that time, Amos Boudeaux opened the door to my office and clomped in, all three hundred burly pounds of him. “I’m in town for supplies,” he bellowed as he wedged himself into the chair opposite my desk. “And I want to pay you to run my ad again.”
“Amos, you’ve run that ad twenty-seven times now and haven’t gotten one response. Frankly, I think you’re wasting your money. No woman is going to give up what little refinement she presently has to take up the rigors of back country life hunting uranium with you!”
“You're wrong, Bill. The right woman just hasn’t seen my ad yet, and until she does we’re gonna go right on lookin’ for her. I kind of figure love and consideration is more important than the refinement you mention.”
Now, I hadn’t seen this ‘love and consideration’ side of Amos before. To me, he’d always seemed like a hard-bitten frontier type who’d needed a woman for the ‘consideration’ she could provide him—cooking, tending camp, and warming his bed at night. The thought that he might be the fulfillment of some woman’s dreams hadn’t occurred to me, and I studied him in this new light. There was a kindliness about him, I decided, and a rather keen intelligence that his grizzled appearance belied.
“I may not be that much to look at, but I have a cherishin’ heart and the loyalty of a mother grizzly with cubs,” he added.
“Let’s rewrite that ad, Amos, soften it a bit, maybe flower it up some, and we’ll run it until you find the right girl!” Buoyed by my new insight, I added, “And we’ll do it without charging you another dime!”
It was after Amos left I began to regret my impulsive generosity. When I assayed the tenuous nature of my holdings and the rising cost of paper, I decided spontaneous acts of kindness were, in my case, invitations to disaster, and I took a vow of enrichment with every opportunity future opportunity presented.
With Cassandra curled up on the hearth like a comma, I turned back to my editorial but was interrupted by another visitor. “Good morning, Carl, what can I do for you?”
“B-b-b-Bill,” he stammered, succinctness the best control he could implement. “I-I-I’ve invented a n-n-n-new f-f-f-fastener I w-w-w-want to advertise in the D-D-Doodlebug Run-on.”
“A new fastener, you say. Does it work like a zipper?”
“N-n-n-no, it works like Velcro. It’s m-m-m-made out of b-b-b-beeswax and shredded j-j-j-jumping cactus. I-I-I’m thinking of c-c-c-calling it ‘c-c-c-cactimat.’”
“Maybe you ought to think of calling ‘Helcro,’ “I said with what I hoped was an appreciative smile. “What happens when the wax melts?”
“I-I-I’m working on that. Right n-n-now, you get a grease stain and a b-b-b-bunch of sharp lint.”
“What say we sit on this until you find the means of stabilizing the wax, and in the meantime we’ll try to find a suitable market. Will that work for you?” He agreed and left.
Cassandra hadn’t stirred. Absolutely nothing that happened between her ritualistic ablutions and the departure of my last visitor interrupted the soundness of her sleep nor the peacefulness of the office over which the regalness of her presence reigned supreme.
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