The air over downtown Madsen, New Jersey buzzed with calamity. The intersection of Twelfth Street and Hamilton Avenue shook under the panicked stampede of civilians. People of every make and model surged every which way, filling the urban corridor with echoing screams. Businessmen body-checked fathers into mothers. Parents wielded their children like war hammers, clubbing strangers out of their way. Neurotics curled into fetal shells and were kicked down the street like black and blue tumbleweeds. Drunken pugilists put up their dukes and wanted at ‘em. Closet cases screamed their long-hidden sexual predilections into the sky. The socially awkward grabbed random women and tried to have sex with them. A bearded lunatic brandishing a placard adorned with Bible verses rushed into the crowd and shouted apocalyptic predictions. He was quickly trampled. Tires screeched and brakes whined as cars slammed into skyscrapers, collapsed into twisted heaps of metal, and launched fleeing pedestrians into the air. Street lamps toppled to the ground. Garbage cans soared through panes of glass. A spell of bedlam had descended over the street.
At the storm’s eye was the Toddler, his lollipop held aloft, openly inquiring how many licks it would take to reach the center.
Half a mile beneath the street Dubious Lee, flanked by his villainous coterie, reveled in the disaster unfurling on his massive view-screen. Titmouse, Metalhead, and Alfobet Soope stood behind the ringleader, periodically glancing at the view-screen, engaged in their ongoing debate of the utmost importance: “Some guy took a picture of it in 1986. You can see it has dark hair,” said Metalhead.
“Look, man,” countered Alfobet Soope, “I know ‘bout yetis and I know ‘bout evolution. Yeti’s not gonna survive in the snow ‘less it got a pelt for camouflage.”
“There’s photographic evidence!”
“Fuck outta here! Those pics are doctored. Every artist’s rendition shows it with white fur.”
“You’re both way off,” argued Titmouse. “It’s all about Mothman!”
Dubious Lee ignored the ridiculous badinage; he watched the anarchic carnage unspool. He stood like personified marble, unflinching and unperturbed. He waited patiently for the arrival of his bete noire, the single-celled shyster who cured the disease that never existed. Leland DuBois had done nothing originally startling. He hadn’t committed a single atrocity countless others hadn’t as well. His sin had been arrogance, making little effort to hide his professional transgressions. He knew that. He had made himself an obvious target. Simple Country Lawyer had been merely the first to hit the bullseye. And now he was a hero? Dubious Lee would not abide the duplicitous irony of it all. His lips curled with epicurean anticipation.
Twelfth & Hamilton was littered with debris and bodies. The only sign of life stood at its center. The Toddler’s cherubic face was a beacon of innocence without expectation. He waited for the arrival of his victim.
“You best have one whopper of a explanation of this hullabaloo here,” came a voice from behind the Toddler.
“He’s here!” hissed Dubious Lee, his mouth jerked into a carnivorous rictus.
The Toddler beamed ravenously as he turned to face the litigious planarian. “Why?”
“‘Cause if you’re missing one,” said Simple Country Lawyer, “you’re in more trouble than a head coach in Oakland.”
“Why?”
Dubious Lee clenched his fists greedily. “Yes, answer him, Lawyer! Talk your way out of this!”
The Lawyer stood silent, regarding the inquisitive little child of the corn like a suddenly manifested sty. His argumentative hackles were rising with each repeated syllable from the Toddler’s mouth. He could feel himself being drawn by the Toddler’s psionic tractor beam, inching toward his semantic web.
He cocked his head (or whatever you would call it) to one side, folded his hands (or whatever they were) together and calmly said, “Well, that there question’s got more moving parts than a Rube Goldberg cotton gin. What you’re asking begs the further inquiry of where do our values come from at all,”
Dubious Lee jerked back. “What is he doing?”
Simple Country Lawyer continued, “Some have argued that our values – morality, ethics, what have you – are merely our more highly developed human minds’ attempt to rationalize the irrational instincts of the vestigial lower brains from whence we arose.”
“What is he doing?!” cried Dubious Lee.
“I think he’s being a lawyer,” said Metalhead.
“Impossible! You can’t be a lawyer with a toddler, let alone that one!”
“Apparently he can,” said Titmouse.
Simple Country Lawyer continued, “‘Course that all begs the question: is evolution real. Now, granted, the theory’s got holes to fit a bobcat’s litter. But that don’t mean it’s not so.”
“Why?”
“Keep it to yourself, son,” he answered dismissively. “But if it ain’t so, does the answer reside in the unprovable ether of an omnipotent super-whoever, pulling and yanking all our strings like a puppeteer on draft day? If fatalism is the answer, then the identity of that deity becomes the question. Which faith is the correct one? Or perhaps none of them are, and we all are blind birds flying through a hurricane.”
The Toddler’s lip quivered nervously. “W-Why?”
“Never interrupt a planarian pontificating, boy.”
Alfobet Soope said to his grimacing leader, “Man, y’all fucked up.”
“This is horseshit!” bellowed Dubious Lee and turned on his heel. “To the Monopoly Mobile – NOW!!!”
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