story: David M. Taxpayer v. Goliath, LLC

David M. Taxpayer v. Goliath, LLC

by Erik Jorgensen - copyright 2013

Glancing up at Goliath, David realized that toppling a titanic Tyrant requires a small stone, indeed.  Looking around and 'round at the ground, David realized that even the smallest single speck of sand was far too fierce for this fearsome foe.  Then Grandfather's favorite saying echoed up from the silent shadows of the misty, murky past:

The Pen, with all its florid, superfluous verbosity, is the Sacred Anvil upon which may be forged The TRUTH - that immense, innate, supernatural Strength, whose edge far exceeds any of merely mundane steel sword. Verily, once you discover the True Path of Truth - and Work to follow it - you will have the Strength of the Universe pushing you toward your True Destiny.

Enboldened by this erudite encouragement, David pulled a small black notebook from his pocket - Grandfather's graduation gift after completing his compulsory classes at the Public Proletarium.  Delicately, reverent and nostalgic, his fingertip traced the septaugenarian's spidery script sagely suggesting:

Sir Galahad had the Strength of Ten because his Heart was Pure

Below, bold blocky letters proudly proclaimed:

David Middlename Taxpayer

Langstroth Luxury Lodgings

23 FranzKafka Strasse

Orwellopolis, Unified Dystopian Democratic Republic

(please return if found)

Thumbing through page after page of Grandfather's aphorisms, advice, and anecdotes, David finally found a suitable page, mostly blank except for a copy of his childhood recipe for:

BluweBerry Suop:

Melk in Sosspan. 

Shuger, to Tayst.

Add BluweBerrys.

Ster.

Heet to dezired Tempachur.

Serv in a Bole wen Reddy.

RePeet as Needid!!!

With fresh BluweBerry Suop wafting warmly across the nostalgic nostrils of memory, little Davey Taxpayer carefully created a crease along the sheet, just like Grandfather taught him making paper airplanes on those rainy autumn afternoons, close to the spine - but not too close - of the well-worn writingbook.  Flattening the fold with his fingertip first, he sharpened the crease - hard - with his fingernail, then folded the page in the opposite direction and repeated the process, removing a single small sheet by patiently peeling apart the perforated paper.

Plan in place, paralyzing panic prevailed:  It isn't the Sword - it's the Hand; it isn't the Pen - it's the Words.  But which words?  - and in which order?  Writer's Block had atrophied his pen into a mere stick countless times before - like the summer when Mrs. Raskolnikov's granddaughter came to visit, with her long silken braids, and rosy smile twinkling like a mountain stream sparkling through a golden glade, glowing brightly beneath bluest azure skies of deepest summer.... But never, ever had his mind been so utterly, uselessly blank - far, far blanker than the single sheet (nearly-naked except for those twenty-three little words about bluweberries) which he stared at hopelessly. 

That sparse childhood recipe was a veritable "Compleat Works of Shaespeare" compared to the immense empire of emptiness encompassing his mind, which emptily echoed the silence until it became a deafening, drowning drumbeat.  David's despair dropped so deeply, that even Utter Hopelessness was Starry-Eyed Optimism by comparison.  And it was deep in this Darkness where the Candle discovered its Light....

"The worst that can happen to me is that this kills me", David realized suddenly, "but Death will happen eventually to me on its own, whether or not I decide to Do The Right Thing in this place, at this time."  Like a Thunderbolt from a summer storm, this sudden flash of illumination shook and shattered all the shingles of his sheltered soul, and he gasped his very first real breath of his life.

Sunlight shone on him, its warm breath rhyming with the breeze dancing through the cherry blossoms.  Calmness clutched and caressed every corner of his being like a velvet noose.  Meadowlarks rejoiced from the trees, and from his heart.  Bees gathered pollen in the flowers and in his mind.  Clouds flowed across the sky, and across his soul.  More alive than he had ever been in his life, the Universe flowed around him, and through him - so purely alive and aware, that he completely forgot about that nice fellow whom people called David Taxpayer.  There was only the sun, the wind, and the garden.  Observing itself.

The ground grinding and groaning at Goliath's gigantic galoshes, David pulled out the ornately gold-arabequed  fountain pen which had been the single luxury item Grandfather permitted himself.  That short, sharp shock of shame came, recalling the Wake - leaning in close to Grandfather in his casket so that nobody could see The Pen silently sliding from its final resting place in that inside flannel jacket pocket.  Betrayed by a kiss...  Screwing off the cap, David smiled at the humble vanity behind Grandfather ornate pen - far too fancy and frivolous a stylus for the sincere seriousness of a simple Scribe's sacrosanct status. 

Grandpa pretended purchasing the Pen prudently, for purely practical purposes.  The self-indulgently opulent, overly ostentatiousness stated a very specific Point - and that was Just Good Business.  "Nobody trusts a Scribe with a broken crayon," Grandfather often alibied - but David secretly suspected that one of Grandfather's little personal practical jokes was that he had bought the Pen just because it looked so pretty. 

"Let your every action be your last epitaph," Grandfather whispered into his ear.  Startled by the sudden sound, David whirled around and was astonished to discover... nobody.  Goliath was even closer now, towering like a terrible tombstone.  An odd non-feeling filled David; it wasn't fear, or happiness, or anger, or even a desire for revenge.  It was that calm, quiet feeling you get when "Two plus Three equals..." has "Five" written next to it.  But you don't Say, "Yes, that's it"; you don't Think that - you don't even Know that.  It just Is.

Certainly, if there were ever a time for a pen to write smoothly, this would be it.  Watching in detached bemusement as the black ink flowed out of the golden pen across the white page, he suddenly stared at the words somebody else had written there:

.

"I will impale my Pen into the heart of Fascism with the full Strength from every last drop of Blood in my body!"

Crumpling the scrap of paper smaller and smaller, David stared at it in deep concentration at this brand new weapon he now held in the palm of his hand.  Fluttering feebly like a newborn butterfly, the little wordstone gently rose into the air, then shot like a kryptonite bullet straight for where Goliath's black and shrivelled heart should be.  "I have not yet begun to Write!" As he watched his weapon whirling higher and higher and higher, he could hear Grandfather proudly say, "Today the hammer has become the Anvil."

As the meadowlarks sang to him,and through him, their rejoiceful refrain of the sunlight and breeze dancing in the cherry blossoms, he could see the banks of the River of Time which had swept him along a series of events to this strange and distant shore, where he had no choice but to do this One Thing.

As he continued looking up, hanging down in front of him was the reddest, ripest, roundest Strawberry he had ever seen in his life, and he plucked it.

It was delicious.

"Goodness, gracious me!" Goliath grumbled grumpily. "I seem to have stepped upon one of those, nasty little things again.  This better not make me late for my tee time!"