The Peaceful Affair: Chapter 33
“Flying in the face of a Mountie is something we do not approve of,” said the peacock in an authoritative voice, humbly parading his beautiful flying colors, testimony to his being a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
“Officer, I swear I didn’t do it on purpose,” swore Bartholomew Skypie profusely. “It’s just that, well, the airways are so congested.”
Somewhat mollified, the peacock brushed an imaginary speck of dust off his immaculately clean uniform, and said, “Well, all right then. Just this once I’ll allow you to get off lightly.” Skypie began breathing more easily. “Twenty-five years in a maximum-security nest,” concluded the policebird deadpan.
Skypie’s breath took a hike. “Twenty-f … Twenty-f …” he tried to pronounce, only to wind up in a not-for-profit fit of coughing.
“Just kidding,” laughed the Mountie heartily, and slapped Skypie friendlily on his white crest. “Go on, off you fly.”
Slowly, Skypie’s breath returned to him by fits and starts. “Nothing like a bit of lawful humor,” he finally managed to eke out a reply.
“Thank you,” said the peacock gratefully. “Awful humor is our weapon of choice.”
Skypie eyed the flying masses all around him, and asked, “Tell me, where is everybody going?”
“You don’t know?” amazed the Mountie. “Today’s the big game.”
“The big game?” repeated Skypie.
“The Montreal Birds against the Cincinnati Bees.”
“The Birds and the Bees are playing each other?” shouted Skypie. “When?”
“At high noon,” replied the policebird.
Flapping his wings excitedly, Skypie avowed, “I must see the game!”
“Not a chance,” said the peacock firmly. “It’s been sold out for weeks now. You can’t even get near the Montreal Aviary.”
“We’ll just have to see about that,” whispered Skypie vaguely, and got off to a flying start.
After several minutes of flying high Skypie arrived at a shady part of town, and requested landing authorization from a bald legal eagle named Clint. The stately bird, who seemed to come straight out of a flyer, peered at him intently, and after several tense moments provided the sought-after authorization with a regal gesture of wings.
Skypie thanked the airborne gentlebird and perched on a red picket fence.
“Hello TP,” Skypie greeted the fence with a jovial wing flutter. “How is everything?”
“Skypie! Haven’t seen you around here in ages,” cried Ticket Picket — “TP” to his friends and buddies alike. “Everything’s just dandy. Where have you been hiding?”
“Hiding?” repeated Skypie indignantly. “My dear TP, we seagulls never hide — we seek.”
The fence shrugged his pickets. “As you wish, Skypie. Just don’t tell me you seek a ticket for the big game.”
“In point of fact, I do,” pointed Skypie.
“Alas, my friend, you’re too late,” lamented TP. “I have not a single ticket left.”
“Come now, TP,” smiled Skypie knowingly, “enough with your customary price-boosting spiel. I know you have a ticket for me — you’re the best fence in town. Now, out with it.”
“You know me too well,” sighed the picket fence. “Okay, you win. But it’s going to cost you.”
“How much?”
“A bill and a tail.”
Skypie placed a brotherly wing on one of the fence’s pickets. “TP, TP, TP, you can do better than that for an old friend, can’t you?”
The question hung in the air for several seconds, until the fence grabbed it and replied, “Very well, Skypie. I’ll price you a special price: an arm and a leg. And believe me — ”
“You’re losing your paint on this one,” completed Skypie laughingly.
“It’s so hard being a famous fence,” keened TP sadly. “People know all your pitches by heart.”
Skypie flapped his wings impatiently. “Spare me, TP. Why, you’ve got the entire market barricaded, you live in a lovely garden, you married the most beautiful hedge in town, and you drive a hard bargain. Now, the game starts in five minutes and I have no intention of missing even a single second.”
Ticket Picket picked the ticket from one of his private ticket trees, and gave the precious item to Skypie, who winged him an arm and a leg in return.
“A good deal,” remarked the seagull contentedly, not at all bothered by the seemingly bothersome price; as an airborne bird he had little use for a leg and even less use for an arm.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone’s living at my expense,” growled TP, as he placed the arm in the armory and the leg in the legory. “Off you fly to your game now.”
Skypie needed no further prodding. He flew off to his game now.
The Montreal Aviary was in a state of effervescence, bubbling, hissing, and foaming like a bathtub whose rubber duck had been brutally taken away.
“Bird or Bee?” came a question from a flying usher, as the seagull positioned himself at the back of a line.
“Bird,” replied Skypie unhesitatingly, evincing the capacity for self-recognition his species possessed so amply.
“Then you’re standing in the wrong line, buddy,” said the usher, and lined up the seagull at the rear of the Bird line, directly behind a boisterous group of local fans, whose cries rang loudly in Skypie’s ears:
“Go Birds! Go Birds!”
“Montreal, Montreal, number one at playing bawl!”
When the seagull finally made it to his seat he was a bit frayed at the edges. A Coke and a bag of birdseed proved highly instrumental in regaining the edges he’d frayed. Next to him sat a hive of enthusiastic schoolbees, who were shouting politely, “Bees, Bees, shoot the breeze, bring the birdies to their knees!” Skypie turned his attention downward, where the action was commencing.
The referee, a springy kangaroo born in Coventry and raised in a convent, hopped to the middle of the field ceremoniously. The chirping and buzzing throughout the aviary faded into charged silence. The game’s supreme arbiter paused to stare at the two opposing teams for an intent moment; she then pulled a flying Dutchman named Vincent van Gosh out of her pouch — and set him free. The crowd released a pent-up roar of excitement.
“Go Bees!” came a united cry from the Bees fans.
“Go Birds!” replied the Birds supporters with their own rallying call.
The Bees were first to accost van Gosh; they nabbed the Dutchman, sat him down in a high chair, and offered him superb honey.
“Hi, Vincent,” said Marie-Anne van Gosh.
“Hi, honey,” replied the flying Dutchman calmly. “How are things at home?”
“The boys miss you.”
“And the girls?”
“We don’t have any girls.”
“Then who are those two gals whom I keep running into at home?”
“They’re the conju gals, silly,” replied Marie-Anne lovingly.
The queen bee, who’d been listening quietly all this while, decided she’d had enough of the Dutch pappekak. “Enough of this poppycock,” she said decisively and sent Marie-Anne van Gosh back home, with a year’s supply of honey and two tickets to Hive Five, the renowned Fris-bee club.
“Ooh, thanks,” delighted Marie-Anne. “I just love freebees.” And she was gone like a beebee pellet.
The queen then turned to the flying Dutchman and spoke in a firm voice. “Pay close attention, van Gosh. You will now accompany Mr. Nitpick here to the Birds’ goalpost, thus scoring twenty-eight points for the Bees, or else I’ll flood you with such a deluge of buzzwords your head will spin like a banana gone mad. Is that clear?”
A large gloomy bee — Mr. Nitpick — rose and spoke gravely. “I’m waiting, Mr. van Gosh. W, A, I, T, I, N, G. Waiting.”
“I refuse to go anywhere with that spelling bee!” shouted the Dutchman, to be immediately booed by half the crowd, and bravoed by the other half. Just then, the Birds managed to break the Bees’ defense line, beelining all the way up to the high chair and seizing van Gosh.
“Go Birds! Go Birds!” shouted half the crowd in ecstasy. “Birds of a feather block together!”
The Birds rushed the flying Dutchman to their nest, and put him down on a clutch of eggs to brood. After a while, Clint, the bald legal eagle, who served as the team’s lawyer, began the interrogation. “Will you please tell the flock, in your own words, what transpired with the Bees?” he asked in a legal tone.
Vincent van Gosh stared at his flock, raised both his hands skyward, and spoke devoutly. “I’ll come clean.”
“Hallelujah!” called the Birds piously, to be joined by the birds in the crowd.
“You know where I’ve been.”
“Hallelujah!”
“I’ve spoken to the queen.”
“Hallelujah!”
“Who made a scene.”
“Hallelujah!”
“Enough!” ordered Clint in a voice so somber it ruffled one of the feathers in his cap. He turned to van Gosh, and asked, “Were you, or were you not, asked to escort one Mr. Nitpick to the Birds’ goalpost, thus scoring twenty-eight points for the Bees?”
“I was,” admitted the flying Dutchman stolidly.
Clint turned to the refereeing kangaroo. “Your honor, I call for a mismatch.” The crowd was on its feet, aware they were witnessing history in the making.
“On what grounds?” asked the referee sternly, extracting an espresso machine from her pouch; clearly, this match was going to require an infusion of caffeine.
Clint spread his broad wings, took off in a fanfare of fans, and buzzed the spectators. He then touched down and announced in a licit tone, “On the grounds, your honor, of mis-bee-havior.”
The spectators in the wings were making such a hullabaloo as to become a fly in the ointment. “Silence,” commanded the kangaroo, “or I’ll have the bailiff clear the aviary.” Mention of the slender hippopotamus — a struggling writer who made ends meet by acting as officer of the court — was sufficient to occasion a wave of silence.
“I’ll retire to my chambers to consider your request,” the referee announced to Clint. She hopped off the field, only to hop back on two minutes later. Turning to the jury on the pier, she said, “Members of the jury, I thank you for your assistance. You are now dismissed.” The twelve jurists jumped off the jury rig into the water, and swam back to Atlantis.
“Eagle,” she turned toward Clint, “I have considered your demand through-and-through.” She paused to let the suspense music work its effect. “Your request is granted. I hereby declare this match amiss.”
And the gavel struck.
Mere words failed to describe the state of the aviary. So the words gathered into sentences, sallied forth to Montreal’s popular daily Can O’ Dada, and jumped onto the city editor’s desk.
“What can I do for you?” asked the surprised editor.
“Can you put in a good word for us?” they inquired.
“In a word, no,” replied the city editor, who was well known for being a man of his word.
Back in the bubbly aviary, Bartholomew Skypie caught whiff of the time. “Good heavens,” he announced to no one in particular, and took off in such a hurry he nearly crashed into a landing stork who was carrying three crybabies.
“For crying out loud, can’t you watch where you’re flying?” cried the stork out loud, inadvertently knocking over a glass of milk quietly minding her own business.
“No use crying over spilled milk,” shouted Skypie as he disappeared from view. He activated his turbo-tail and flew at supersonic speed, his trip done before all was said.
Skypie arrived at the headquarters of General Orgie de la Fesse just in time to hear Victor and Young Man Coronet offering the general a peace deal. The enterprising seagull bore witness to the general’s falling off his rocker, and to the ensuing dropping of curtains.
On his way back to New York Skypie stopped to say hello to Freddy the hippopotamus who was vacationing in Niagara Falls.
“Still practicing mass hipposis?” asked Skypie.
“I’d rather muss moss than miss mass,” replied Freddy messily and drank his fill, causing the falls to be closed until further Otis.
“Who’s Otis?” asked Skypie as he took off.
“The plumber,” shouted Freddy and sauntered off to exercise a bit of mass hipposis on the hip tourists.
It was late afternoon by the time the seagull alighted in Noro Myx’s living room.
“You seem a bit parched, Bartholomew,” observed Myx attentively. “May I offer you something in the way of a drink?”
“A martini would be nice,” replied Skypie dryly. “Stirred, not shaken.”
Myx poured and stirred but did not shake, handing the result to the seagull — who gulped it down wolfishly.
“Thanks. I needed that,” admitted Skypie posteriorly. He spread his wings and flew onto Myx’s right shoulder, a perching position known to be highly conducive to susurration. The seagull then related his recent observations at de la Fesse’s headquarters.
“Most interesting,” remarked Myx once the tail had finished recounting his tale.
Skypie took leave of Myx and took off, the detective muttering, “It’s so nice to have a little bird whisper in one’s ear.” Luckily, the seagull was already out of earshot.
The big gull hated being called “a little bird”.
