Barkley Bohner, Celebrity Philosopher

Chapter Fourteen

If ever there were a figure upon which all of history pivots, it was she, Betsy of Miraculous Birth, daughter of Betsy Virgin Prefect of Bonheur and God, soon to become known as "The Resourceful."

A contemporary account describes this particular Betsy as angelic in nature, befitting her extraordinary birth, with skin of alabaster white and hair of the finest spun gold and sparkling eyes of lapis lazuli.

Another account makes reference to Betsy's beady eyes and shadowy visage and matted hair of bastard black.

The year is 1120, mere months after the auspicious death of Roger the Supremely Satisfied from a falling rock from the sky.

In the company of her older half-brother, Bark'lly of Questionable Temperament, plus two armed escorts, the 14-year-old Betsy has arrived in the Mediterranean port of Acre. Together the party proceeds overland to the city of Jerusalem, seat of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, established in the wake of the First Crusade some two decades earlier.

The Kingdom is a Second Crusade waiting to happen, and Bark'lly wastes no time in precipitating one. On a mountain pass leading toward the city, their party happens upon a band of Hebrew shepherds.

"Saracens!" Bark'lly exclaims. He raises his sword and spurs his mount through a field of crocuses. "Gratum inferno, Infidelibus!" he shouts, just prior to going down in a Davidian fusillade of stone. His two escorts fall along with him.

Betsy dismounts and signals a brief time-out. She deftly tiptoes around two dead escorts and her dazed half-brother and asks the shepherds if, per chance, any of them has a spare Saracen spear lying about.

The shepherds size up Betsy. They are in a bind. They can't allow her to live and alert the authorities, but she is a mere girl. The spear, she repeats.

They turn to each other and shrug their shoulders. One of them hands her a bladed lance, which he says comes in handy for roasting lamb on a spit. 

"Very appropriate," Betsy replies. Whereupon, she lays both hands on the weapon, and calmly strolls over to Bark'lly, still recumbent among the crocuses. "My poor sacrificial lamb," she tells him in a soothing voice. Then, with no hesitation, she raises the lance, brings it down, and runs it through her half-brother's heart. 

"As God is my witness," she tells the shepherds, "my brother died by a Saracen blade, a martyr to his faith."

"As God is our witness," the stunned shepherds reply. 

Hours later, lance in hand, made holy by the blood of her martyred half-brother, Betsy makes her triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

This is how Betsy, of miraculous birth, came to be known as "The Resourceful."

Moosh shook the sleep out of his system and sucked down his coffee. It had been a long night. The morning sun now streamed through the window. The place would soon turn into an oven. 

"Betsy the Resourceful," he said, shaking his head back and forth.

"You might call her the Betsy prototype," I replied.

"Key to the reality puzzle, obviously. Do you think we should bring Quincy in on this?"

CRASH!

The door flew open. A geeky white guy entered and dropped his laser pen on the floor. Don't ask me why I paid attention to the laser pen instead of the Vietnam-era M16 automatic rifle he had pointed straight at my head. "Die, Barkley Bohner!" he shouted. He squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened. The geek looked down at his M16, then up at us. "Stay where you are," he instructed, looking a bit embarrassed. "I'm not sure I loaded this clip correctly."

Moosh was ever helpful. "Quincy," he said, standing up very slowly, pulling me to my feet.

Quincy!

"Quincy. You see the small button in front of the trigger, right side?"

"Yeh."

"Press that. Then you're good to go."

"Gee, thanks!" Quincy pressed the button. The magazine popped out and clattered to the floor next to his laser pen.

"Oops, sorry," said Moosh. "I think you hit the wrong button."

Quincy looked down at his clip on the floor, up to us, totally lost and confused. Then he handed over his weapon to Moosh. "Uh – can you show me how to do it?"

"Yeh, sure," said Moosh, as if he encountered this sort of situation all the time. "Of course."

Moosh made a show of inspecting the weapon, first checking to see that there was no cartridge in the chamber. "I see what's wrong, Quincy," he said in a breezy voice. "No problem. We can fix this in a jiffy. Dunstar, do you have any duct tape?"

Somehow I managed to coherently shake my head no.

Moosh casually handed me the M16. "You stay put," he instructed. "My man Quincy and I – we're going out to get some duct tape. Don't forget your laser pen, Quincy. You ready?"

Quincy meekly acquiesced. The door closed behind them. There I was, alone in my Ungentrified Harlem hideout, standing with an M16. Just another day in the life of Barkley Bohner.