The Myth of Wile E

Horses, Kings, and Princes

So there I was, only looking ahead, never looking down (except sometimes just a little bit to peek at the squirrels, curled up in my shirt pocket), when the hunting party stopped by my farm stand the first week of October.

They stood there awkwardly, each holding a basket full of the big reddish fairy tale mushrooms I'd seen before. The dog had his nose pressed to the ground and started sniffing in a big circle, around and around the farm stand, hot on the trail of heffalumps.

I asked the hunting party how things were going and whether they were still looking for morals.

The older girl shook her head and told me, "Horses, kings, and princes."

"Hmm," I said.

She added, "Too late, for morals."

"Hmm," I said again.

Then the girl said, "Dealer away, two week Canada."

"Dealer?" Oh—maybe they wanted to play cards. I was pretty good at poker because I could never remember what beat what, so I just folded or raised at random. Daddy once told me he'd never known anybody who could bluff as good as me. Whenever he had a game night I could clean his friends out in fifteen minutes. Of course, that was before Daddy found religion and misplaced those kinds of friends.

The girl was saying, "No dealer, no can sail. You sail?"

I said, "No . . . I don't even have a boat."

The girl sighed. She shook the basket full of mushrooms. "Good bury-yet-see. Horses, kings, princes." She put the basket on the farm stand and said slowly, "You seh-ull, we split?"

Oh. That sale.

Before I could answer, the dog started barking like crazy and bolted toward me, zeroing in on the pocket of my shirt. I felt the squirrels squirm around in my pocket, awakened by panic.

"No!" I yelled, and jumped up onto the table to get out of the dog's reach. But the squirrels bolted out of my pocket, scrambled up my shirt and onto my head, and base-jumped off, gliding through the air like little grayish four-footed paper airplanes. The moment they touched ground, they started running for their lives.

"Nooooo!" I shouted again, running after the dog as he ran barking after the squirrels. He was gaining on them. Their little tails spun and flicked in the air as if to propel them just that little bit faster. 

"Pesha, naaaaa!" shouted the hunting party as they ran after all four of us: me, the dog, and the squirrels.

With a second to spare, the squirrels launched onto the base of a spruce tree and raced up it as if climbing two tiny invisible ladders.

From a safe height, the squirrels squawk-chattered furiously. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but their outrage was clear. They were like two old guys shaking their fists and swearing from their apartment windows at the punks in the alley below.

But, like a punk, the dog was bored by their rebukes. He'd already lost interest in the squirrels, and was plowing through the fluffy carpet of dead leaves and pine needles with his muzzle, first slowly, then with great enthusiasm.

As the hunting party caught up, the dog began pawing frantically at the ground beneath the spruce. The father grabbed the dog's collar and pulled him back, patting the goofy, slobbering creature and giving him a doggy treat. I was outraged on the squirrels' behalf. Fool dog or not, I couldn't see rewarding this sort of squirrel-harassing behavior.

The younger kid knelt down where the dog had been pawing the ground. He had his miniature pitchfork in hand and was gently but eagerly combing the pine needles and dirt out of the way. I thought he was making a Zen garden. But then he scooped something out of the ground—actually, several dark, lumpy somethings about the size of chicken eggs.

"True fools!" the girl said to me. "True fools!"

Ohhh.

Well, in my defense, who knew truffles came from the ground?

The boy kept digging, but only found a couple more of the lumps, and they were the size of Milk Duds and Raisinettes. The dog sniffed around a few other trees with interest, but didn't feel there were any more treasures worth digging for. He probably just smelled a hint of squirrel. Those happened to be some of my squirrels' favorite trees.

The father inspected one of the truffles, and nodded. He said something emphatic and shook his phone as if to underline the point. The mother and father exchanged words. I saw both their eyes shift skeptically in the direction of the farm stand.

Then the girl said to me: "Dealer away. Two week Canada."

The father put the truffles on the edge of the table next to the big reddish mushrooms, and nodded.

"You sale. We split?" the girl said.

I gathered I was being offered fungus on consignment.

I shrugged and nodded. "I sell, we split."

When the hunting party left I figured I really should try one of the truffles to see what they were all about. A seller should know what they're selling. So, like a kid trying a Brussels sprout for the first time, I held my nose and took a bite of the smallest truffle of the bunch.

Well. As I feared, it didn't taste much like chocolate at all. It tasted like a party going on in my mouth, and not a kid-friendly party with cake and ice cream, either. More like a freaky party I should not have attended. The kind thrown by corrupt billionaires on their own private islands where everyone including the waiters wears creepy masks. All things considered, I think I'd rather have a Brussels sprout.