Flint Stones in the Nascent Circus (Four Fathers Book 5) Read online

  “For Richard Brian Stone”

  Blue Cover Insert by Ingrid Firchow

  Dear Reader-

  This is fiction. No character in this book is based upon anyone, real or imaginary. The incidents portrayed are entirely figments of the author’s overworked imagination. No shoe is fit to be worn.

  Table of Contents

  Contents

  XXIX. Anything Goes

  Famble

  A. Three Cubed

  1. The Golden Bowl

  2. Krater Aid

  3. Six More Monkey Clowns

  B. Three Congealed

  1. Run of the Mill

  2. Isn’t It a Pity

  3. What is Life

  C. Three Together

  1. Behind That Locked Door

  Scamble

  2. I Dig Love

  3. Wah-Wah

  D. Three Apart

  1. Isn’t It a Pity (Version 2)

  2. My Sweet Lord

  3. Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let it Roll)

  E. Three Convened

  1. I'd Have You Anytime

  2. Awaiting On You All

  3. If Not For You

  F. Three Concealed

  1. Beware of Darkness

  2. Art of Dying

  3. Apple Scruffs

  G. Three Congregated

  1. Hear Me Lord

  2. Let It Down

  3. All Things Must Pass

  XXX. I Get A Kick Out Of You

  A. Two for the Show

  B. Two to Get Ready

  C. Two to Go

  XXXI. Just One of Those Things

  A. Three Aloof

  B. Three a Crowd

  C. Three a Posse

  XXXII. In The Still Of The Night

  A. Three Shaken

  B. Three Stirred

  C. Three Thickened

  XXXIII. From This Moment On

  A. Three Resealed

  B. Three Constrained

  C. Three Contained

  XXXIV. I Concentrate On You

  A. Seasons, Evenin’s, and Songs of Its Own

  B. Too Close to New Orleans

  C. All on the Same Street

  XXXV. I've Got You Under My Skin

  A. Station Street

  B. On the Street Where You Live

  C. Washington Street

  XXXVI. Why Can’t You Behave

  A. Warm Ways

  B. Baby It’s Cold Outside

  XXXVII. Every Time We Say Goodbye

  A. Pieces of the Sky

  B. Kitty Hawk

  C. Both Feet on the Ground

  XXXVIII. Ace in the Hole

  A. Elite Hotel

  B. White Shoes

  C. Luxury Liner

  XXXIX. You’re the Top

  A. Morrison Hotel

  B. Mars Hotel

  C. Hotel California

  XL. What is This Thing Called Love

  Unscramble

  A. Blueberry Hill

  B. Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town

  C. Stumble into Grace

  Four Fathers

  Volume Five

  Flint Stones in the Nascent Circus

  XXIX. Anything Goes

  Famble

  A. Three Cubed

  Everyone is the other and no one is himself.

  1. The Golden Bowl

  Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?

  “Elfears, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be on a slow boat to Oxford?”

  The voice belonged to Brian Bear Hytopf. Robert Elfears had entered the offices of The Prince with his best impression of sauntering stealth. Since he totally lacked any motor coordination, the best Elfears could muster was better described as slither, jelly walk, or incipient stumble. From time immemorial, 48 University Place held the offices of The Daily Princetonian, the second college newspaper to be published every school day. The Prince Offices sit on the western edge of the main campus, between Lockhart Hall and Foulke Hall, just down University Place from the U-Store. The Prince has made deadline after deadline from that location for too many years to remember.

  “Bear, I thought I’d return to my old haunts, the scene of the crime as it were, one last time, for old times sake...”

  “Yea, yea. I got it.”

  “My things have been shipped ahead. So after this brief interlude, I will be leaving on a jet plane. I don’t know when I’ll be back again. These offices are one of the two, I mean few, places where I found comfort away from classes and the exactitude of the scholarly pursuits to which I love to adhere. Here, as an editor, I found the place where pure fabrication clashes with stubborn facts to find harmony. I have come to know, and I am sure you have reached the same conclusion, that once something attains the dignity of typesetting, it takes its place in the realm of history as concluded dialectic. I start school in England in three days. Why are you here before classes start?”

  “As part of the Sports staff, I am charged with the full, fair, and balanced reporting of the Cane Spree. On the former point I cannot agree more. Printing the results of the touch football games played between Ivy League School newspapers on the Saturday mornings before the schools clash, helmets and shoulder pads on the gridiron, has been more whimsy than truth. I can say this, however. Accurate or not, The Prince has faithfully reported the occurrence of every game. The squad I will coach this year will go undefeated as it has gone undefeated since the morning before the first ever college football game with Rutgers 102 years ago. These are too many victories to count. When something does not matter, the truth of it matters even less. Cane Spree winners will be reported with unfailing accuracy, however. The Cane Spree athletic matches between Sophomores and the incoming Freshmen are a saga which stands tall. The backwash of purposeless clashes is now tinged with the honor of the march of time. On the latter point, and keeping the conversation on the subject at hand, I thought Rhodes Scholars had to play Sports, like our favorite son, Bill Bradley.”

  “Right you are Bear. I was able to convince the reviewing committee that playing bridge met the requirements for the grant language established by Cecil Rhodes. While I did not need it, failing that assertion, I was ready to set forth my keen ability to run on ice, a skill I learned during Christmas breaks from Andover, back in my home town of Montreal.”

  “You do know you are almost entirely without athletic skill. You lack even the slightest dexterity. It is a wonder you can ambulate at all. I suppose your ultimate fallback position would be your ability to arrange objects within the confined spaces of cold storage lockers since you have never been anywhere near a real locker room. Plus you don’t really play bridge very much do you?”

  “That is neither here nor there. I plan to delve deeply into the game once I arrive in the land of Friar Tuck and the King’s deer. There must be something to this game that fascinates many in the British upper echelons.”

  “And it has to be more fun than wandering around lost in Sherwood Forest. I think I’ll start playing soon, too. Saying you do things before actually doing them is an idea whose time has come.”

  Robert Elfears was an odd duck by any measure. Outside the realm of academe in which he thrived, the young man was too chicken to even cross the road. There is a saying, “If it walks, swims, and quacks…” Elfears did that homily one better. His power of persuasion, his confounding ability to cloud and obscure the obvious had been refined after years of thought and afterthought. Elfears had conquered the place where rumination and self-absorption intersect to fuse a special glory. He merely had to assert, as only he could, that it walked, swam, and
quacked ergo it was. The unwashed were prey to his simple guidance. Tell them what it is and they will tell it like it is. Even Oxford dons would not be immune from the forthright deceptive narrative which was his métier. For Bob Elfears, it was an easy matter to strangle the full truth then throw it overboard to drown in the confused chop of half-truths and outright falsehoods. The full realization of his special power was a slow train coming, an epiphany that began to rear its head in the course of Elfears’ prep school years at Andover. Bob discovered that to most, even the highly educated, the notions of fact and opinion are imbued with neither content nor distinction. The two fellow travelers coalesce to form a clouded ball of spectered semblances in a place where truth then suffers the ultimate death blow. This insight coupled with his own acumen and aplomb came to serve Bob Elfears for his whole life. It stood on two legs and flourished at college. During his tenure as an Editor at The Daily Princetonian, Bob Elfears captured, to never let go, the ability to cast a strange light over the market place of ideas. More than even he ever imagined had come within the reach of his considered and considerable grasp. With his unique capability and unfettered disposition, Elfears convinced those irretrievably in the dark that they could see. It amused Bob. Almost without exception, everyone around him was beset and confounded by a black dense, impervious blanket of ignorance. Incantation was the word Elfears liked best- a series of words said as a magic spell or charm. Bob now knew that he, more than many of the most literate, could sway and hold sway with his own particular deft ability to express what is not, as if it were. Sophistical sleight of hand was more than its own reward. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain was a platitude beneath Elfears’ dignity. Nevertheless, that which is, the substance of a thing, its verity did not stand in the way of his acquisitive reach. The stated standards for the Rhodes Scholarship were a case in point-

  literary and scholastic attainments;

  energy to use one's talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports;

  truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;

  moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one's fellow beings.

  Elfears had surely met the first requirement. The next three remained problematic. Even if the young lad Robert Elfears did not know it deep in his soul, he could not ignore what was visited upon him at Phillips of Andover. Hazing, commonplace and long standing, consonant with the other prep schools for the elite that dot the Eastern seaboard, had made it abundantly clear to him. Princeton’s Cane Spree was just an institutionalized form of hazing, acceptable to the public eye. The closest thing to an athletic bone Elfears ever had in his body were those times he was ordered to the room of an upperclassman to then get on his knees, open his mouth, and serve as a plebe. Elfears maintained his status as knee-bent underling for the duration of his time at Andover. For four years, his sole physical activity, outside of required physical education classes, was this submission. The reason, or more aptly, the rationalization tied to self-deception, for this sort of unspoken and unspeakable physical activity, had long been assimilated and settled in the core of his persona. It was a mere trifle for Elfears to trifle with the Oxford scholarship committee saying that he played the game of bridge assiduously, with great fondness. Elfears contended that bridge fell within the ambit of the definition of sports as intended by Cecil Rhodes. Dallying with the third and fourth requirements was child’s play. Lofty goals and high minded behavior are the murkiest and least known qualities of all. Elfears was sure that he, as much as anyone, had none of those qualities. Demonstrating he had all of them was an easy matter for someone of his ken and savoir faire.

  Strictly speaking, Bob should have been on his way to England two or three days earlier. Before heading to Oxford for the next four years, he wanted to return to the best old place of all. His first stop was The Prince Offices. Those who work for The Daily Princetonian college newspaper accept the royal diminutive as if it were their birthright. Some even turn it up a notch by adopting the mantle of the Medici Renaissance, embellishing a posture more Machiavellian than Machiavelli himself would have approved. Elfears was one of those suffering that conceit. Bob entered The Prince Offices feeling a little bit like a Clark Kent, a superhero who did not wish to leave Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane behind. Elfears’ lack of physical stature was the limit of his resemblance to Clark Kent. Firstly, he held a Casper Milquetoast quality without more. No phone booth, or any other place, would ever serve Bob Elfears to make the switch to Superman. That is unless, the battle cry “effete don’t fail me now” was suddenly heard around the land. Elfears knew he most surely fell within his own conception of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch- a pure intellect acting beyond good and evil. Leaping tall buildings in a single bound, running faster that a locomotive, or flying faster than a speeding bullet were not part of Elfears’ repertoire. When all was said and done, Elfears had only repartee. Secondly, there was no Clark and Lois affinity. For Elfears it was only the Jimmy Olsens he would miss, no matter how he could not face himself to admit it.

  Bear and Elfears stood waiting politely to see who would say the next word. On many other days in the epochs of a grand and glorious history, the two could have been guys scurrying about The Prince Office, grappling to meet deadline. Bear Hytopf was an amiable guy from Philadelphia’s mainline. He was happy to attend the prep school, Haverford. Bear always wore a fitting smile. Sometimes his half smirk reached the full crescent of a toothless smile. Occasionally he would scrunch his eyes, squinting to underscore the point that those around him had lost the thread of the moment. Bear had regular features. He was handsome but in an unremarkable way, with more of a baby face than rugged features. His face was that of the roundest cherub. His average frame held a few extra pounds. In any sandlot baseball game, Bear would be picked in the middle of the pack. Bear was a jolly fellow who found whimsy wherever he strolled. It suited him well that he would belong wherever he stood.

  Robert Elfears was out of place everywhere. Princeton was perfect for Elfears. He felt right in step in one of the few places where almost no one fit in. In the Ivory Tower of the English Department, looks were the last thing to matter. The dashing Hemingway would never have gone to Princeton. The puny James Joyce would have been a more perfect choice than even F. Scott Fitzgerald who was more of an assembly line preppy than even Bear Hytopf. Elfears was a pasty faced Brit. The cold climate of his native Canada not only left his complexion indelibly wan but his skin also bore faint pink blotches. Bob’s forehead was too small. His chin seemed to be missing all together. His eyes were alive with intelligence but lacked even the smallest spark of humanity. Like his forehead and chin, his cheek bones seem to slide into the disarray that was his alone. Elfears’ nose barely separated the spaces which held his eyes. It remained unremarkable as it found its way to end above his upper lip. Matching his surname, Bob’s ears were the model for the title character in the television show, My Favorite Martian, tiny versions of Spock’s Vulcan ears from Star Trek. His little pointy ears stood on either side of his head, small peaks appurtenant to the sharp angle which formed the apex of the top of his skull. Elfears was sloop shouldered with amorphous but overly wide hips. His chest appeared to be more of an indentation than a cavity for his vital organs. Elfears maintained a paunch which girdled his hips fully circumnavigating his waist. His neck separated his head from his lower body in a blurred afterthought. There was absolutely nothing distinguished or distinguishing about Elfears’ appearance.

  Suddenly the door to The Prince Offices seemed to burst open of its own accord. Into the room rushed a young woman. Her appearance suggested a comic book hero, or more aptly, the caricature of some forgotten superhero. Ruth George saw Bear and Elfears then heaved a sigh of some importance. She was wearing man’s wrestling gear. It covered her torso, hips, and thighs, stopping at her knees. The stretch fabric was a shiny black. She was wearing orange knee
pads. Black high-top Converse basketball shoes were Ruth’s choice of footwear. The icing on this bizarre cake was an orange ruffled hat with a top that crumpled in puffy waves to flop atop Ruth’s short hair cut. Bear thought Ruth’s choice of headpiece came from the time of King Henry VIII. In his clearer mind’s eye, Bob was able to pinpoint this historical relic. It belonged in Renaissance Italy capping the curls of someone from the Medici noble family. One would have thought that many of Ruth’s body parts, barely sheathed by her wrestling garb, would be that which required further inquiry. For both Bear and Elfears, their visual review revisited the bright orange knee pads. Ruth was aware of the stares synchronized from opposite corners. When Bear and Elfears then exchanged glances, Ruth cleared her throat. In response to the Sports Editor of The Prince, Bear fell in and came to attention,

  “I have only a few minutes here. Bear, I want to make sure you are ready to cover the Cane Spree. Bob, it is a pleasant surprise to see you here again. Good luck in Merry Old England. I can see you both are wondering why I am so attired. I have volunteered to make a feminist statement…”

  Now both Bear and Elfears cleared their throats.

  “…Why should only men join the Cane Spree? I am staging a protest wrestling match. I have been helping two women, one from the incoming Freshman Class and an opponent from the Sophomores. They are quite adept at learning to wrestle. Men everywhere should know that women can wrestle and that women’s wrestling should not be confined to those sleazy arenas of mud and jello.”

  Elfears spoke next, “Ms. George, why I do declare. Next thing you know you will be touting the merits of those two co-eds who entered a student’s dorm room to destroy his proudly displayed Playboy pinup collection last spring.”

  “Bob, I think you are onto something here.”

  “Wait, Ruth. Let me read to you all the news that fits.”