The Consequences of Arrogance

2,132 words

The Consequences of Arrogance

A Slightly Different Story

It was a stark and dormy knight in the Tater Quad Mansion. Or it would’ve been. If we were still in Hollywood, Indiana, in the year 2000-some. But we’ve found a crack in the atmosphere, stratosphere, or some kind of Stratocaster sphere and the tectonic plates have moved, along with the secret bookcase just a hair and we’re back in jolly old England, year whatever you like, with the dead body of Lord Wolfmeister. Or is it? Is it him, or me? Spiritually speaking. Well, I’m telling the story, but it’s probably actually his. And mine, too. So you pays your money and takes your choice. And suspends your disbelief. With disbelief suspenders. Sproing and snap!

And the gyres did tremble in the white-water wabe in the full moonlight near the manse. And Lord Wolfmeister insisted on being Dead. Dead. Dead. Silly man. Only he wasn’t. Not him. Not really. And not really him. Talk about your cold case! Wait for it!

The gold chandelier cast an eerie glow. Like the golden dome, all about the manse. Golwas in the chamber, on the chamber pot. Woe to the maidservant who had to carry that mother load! The champagne bucket and what-not.

It’s not like he arose again from the dead — truth is stranger than “cruxifiction.”But more like it was never him to begin with. You hadda be there. He was and he wasn’t. And so the story goes. Or doesn’t. It was kinda like when that ambassador Outerbridge Horsey (if you can believe that!) had the gall to be named in the obituaries as a dead guy and someone (not yours truly, maybe it was Darlene riding in on the mystery gray horse) had the diplomatic audacity to ask what did he die of, and the answer came: Outerbridge Horsiness! Yes, sometimes it’s written in destiny. Others, it just falls right in your lap. This death was a lap dance in the making manor, in the manner of a jazz singer who was discovered to be other than what he was. A lord by any other name. In fact, nobody gave their right name, and they’re not used here, anyway, because somebody done it.

“He’s not dead. And I didn’t do it,” the butler, Dan, insisted to the thief inspector Phil Buckingham (and isn’t that an appropriate apropos moniker for a mystery in the manner of a master ghost-buster blaster?).

The butler shimmered in the glimmering manor moonlight. But it didn’t manor or matter or master. Buckingham was not moved. As a castle shouldn’t be. Unless it’s the Tower of London. And then all mayhem ensues. Just try en-suing it!

“Mad as a hatter,” the butler would say about his former boss. “And had as a matter.”

Lord Wolfmeister had often opined about the triffids he felt were growing in the solar greenhouse, which he could see from his vast music room den and whom he was certain were sent by Dr. Oz the magnificent from Mars and SpaceX just to annoy him and then devour him, after spacenapping him to the highly red (and not well-read) planet.

“That greenhouse will be the death of me,” Lord Wolfmeister had said on more than one glittering occasion.

And so rightfully. But it truly wasn’t him in the end.

Perhaps it had contributed. As doesn’t everything? Nobody checks into the Hotel California under their right name. Elvis never leaves the building. You know he’s still hanging around some 7/11, slurping and slurring and not being cruel to a three-headed alien.

Thief Inspector Buckingham inspected a green branch that was found entwined on the body, perfectly preserved (both body and branch, although one a little more green and the other slightly more shriveled by time — or thyme —and smelly than the other). He wondered about things like life and death, and body-snatchings, and out-of-body experiences. (The latter two were my wanderings. You see, the body on that ballroom floor was supposed to have been mine. Yes, the famed journalist and Nobel Prize-winning poet, Juliette, had signed up first to be the mystery room game body, and then lo and behold, a real body showed up. Thought to be Lord Wolfmeister, and who was I to tell anybody any differently — yet.) Wasn’t that life in a nutshell, though? You just couldn’t count on anything. And nothing was fair. Except being high lord of basketball and jazz musicianship. That was pretty good, pretty cool. No matter who you really were. And when it comes to that, how does one know? History is so easily manipulated, and humans so easily led and gullible. Like hoses to water, with apologies to horse-rider Darlene.

But who was the dead he? And who were the suspects? Besides everybody usual in the universe Buckingham could round up. Melissa Dystopia was at the top of the list, just because she was a good runner, and getting from one world to another was never a problem for such a featured teacher/actress. A foot in many worlds.

Not to mention the ubiquitous and ever-popular and up-to-what-good and doing everything Jason, the fire-eater, a multi-talented master, hyphenated director-writer-actor interruptus — and murder accomplice? Also able to leap travel and time zones at a single bound, at will. Add biographer Diane, the seemingly sweet savage savant with the New Hampshire demeanor (the more you know, the meaner it gets). And there was Vic the yodeler (always suspicious, those yodelers, along with any cowboys on the wild west violet range, who might break into some kind of purple prose and salacious song at any moment. Because of their loneliness. Hence, the jazz connection, although Buckingham didn’t need to be reminded, especially by the butler who said he didn’t do it, although he knew all the words to “Born in the USA.” The Boss Bovine. Put that on your white board and smoke it.) And then there was the coroner, Amanda. Who put a stop to the whole thing, if not literally, then figuratively. Figures figure prominently in this cold case of warm bier.

And then there were the playhouse bunnies — the portrait and the princess; third wife and first daughter of Lord Wolfmeister’s many tentacled and be-riched friends. They had to figure in there, somewhere, figuratively. If just as frenemy guests that would never leave — like the corpse who came to dinner. But at least they had been made somewhat useful, as handmaidens to the triffids, delivering water, taking care of their various excretions, and killing off (yes, murder) innocent suspicious bugs, sending them to deported endings the quickest way possible, not caring for all the many family members they left behind. The deadly duo doused themselves royally. And smelled of soil and sweat and fertilizer and bug spray number 5. Green aphids dotted their formerly formally white-glove-tan-bed bejeweled hands. And once, they even attacked each other with dirt clods and spray hoses. Scissors almost became an issue. Buckingham had been called to the gory greenhouse on more than one off-white occasion. Being the upright professional, he tried not to laugh. If Chief Inspector Clouseau had had daughters, these two would have qualified. They were “hanging on by a craw” — but at least they had outlived Lord Wolfmeister. And hoped to collect big-time from his adequate basketball coach and jazz musician pension. And that had to the name of the home place game.

It all depends on who’s telling the story — have you noticed that? What’s left in, what’s omitted to protect the innocent, what’s expanded, exposed, lied, whose point of view, who lived, who died. That’s why witnesses are notoriously not to be relied upon. The same person can be seen in so many different ways, sides, get-ups, by different sets of eyes, ides, ideals, big wheels, big what-ifs. How anybody agrees on anything (even how to make chicken soup for the soul) remains one of life’s mysteries. And death ain’t tellin’. Yes, until you get to the autopsy. That says plenty what happened, if not How. Or Who. Or really Why. And this person’s last meal was a hot fudge sundae, followed by Death By Chocolate, and a chocolate mocha frappe milkshake, and bangers and mash, and mushy peas. Had to be a woman. Could’ve been me. But was it? Out-of-body experientially experimentally?

That’s why the whole cracked team of Estes Park’s WOTB (What Ought To Be) writers' group was brought in by Scotland Yard and MI5, with Tom Cruise on a zip line, to ferret out the truth. And who better at such ferreting than detective journalist scuba diver Buckingham and once-a-journalist, now a hot-shot un-foxed podcaster Jason, along with famous African explorer Aleta and novelist doctor Amanda. If they couldn’t get to the bottom of this, then no one could. There was no bottom. Bottomless and topless. Headless horseman. (Oooh, Darlene, again.) These dynamic duos were meant for doing autopsies and pulling rabbits out of suspicious circumstances, under suspicious auspices and sexes.

Everybody enjoys seeing their name in print, dead or alive, was the WOTB motto. And there truly seems to be no bad publicity, in these times or any. The spirits are always moved and accommodating, whether it’s a near-death experience, an out-of-body experience, or a near-life experience. Some more interesting than others. As was the case of Lord Wolfmeister.

So WOTB always erred on the side of more-than-near-death experiences and definitely out-of-body. And often nearly out-of-mind. But who’s to judge? And how can you tell, really? And who cares, ultimately? And who do you tell what to, and how do they interpret it, and what then do they do with it? Leave it to the lawyers and the accountants and the tax men. And you think life is hard! Just try being dead.

Especially when the coroner (Dr. Amanda from Africa) notices what has been missed by the rest of the world. It takes a woman. Sorry, Thief Inspector, Scotland Yard, MI5, and even Tom Cruise.

“The late Lord Wolfmeister is not Kevin, the winning basketball coach and Tony Hillerman Award-winner,” Amanda announced over high tea at the hospital. “Kevin had a knee replacement. This individual has both original knees, could not jump like a white boy for the hoops, and was more a Stephanie Plum devotee than Tony Hillerman. This body, this corpse, this man was…”

Wait for it!

“…a woman.”

Yikes. See, I told ya. It happens. Fiction only tries to be strange. It can’t beat life. That’s why people read and love stories. There is some sense to be made, some order out of the sheer randomness of existence, some comprehension. And that somebody out there actually has it worse, makes sense of things, triumphs and prevails, or at least survives to tell somebody about it somehow. If not, why bother. Nothing and nobody else can or will explain life or the meaning of death. Or why there are murder mysteries. And time and space travelers. And mixed-up identities.

So this is how Billy Lee Tipton (born Dorothy Lucille Tipton in Oklahoma City in 1914) came to be known as Lord Kevin Wolfmeister of Victorian England. Or at least one fictional interpretation by a murder mystery game-player and Nobel Laureate. And who are you going to believe? Choosing beliefs is as much fiction as anything else. One woman’s account is another’s bank account.

And that’s mostly why she turned into, on the surface, toured, and played as a he. Long before there were Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion possibilities and political ramifications and realities. And drag queens. She eventually became a drag Lord Kevin Wolfmeister. How she found the hole in the universe to transport herself to Victorian England and a title and manor house is a whole ‘nother story and anybody’s guess.

She wanted to be a jazz musician when there was no room on the stage for a woman playing piano and saxophone. Just imagine the audacity! And the arrogance! And the consequences of all that.

She had not been allowed to join her all-male high school band in Oklahoma. So in 1933, she bound her breasts and started acting more masculine, taking on the role of a male musician, the name of the Lord Wolfmeister, and in 1940 began living as a man, performing and touring as a man. Who better knows the consequences of being alive? How you know you’re alive? Or dead?

Now, declared dead in 1989 and finally outed, Lord Kevin Wolfmeister can sleep. She is all that. But her story only came to light afterwards. Thank you, WOTB, and all you truth-seekers. Now, back to your regular programming. You know who now, at least for the victim. But you don’t know the why, or the suspect necessarily. All will be revealed, soon enough. Stay tuned.

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