Thick, Toothy Paste

Mr. Reeves is some sort of retired priest and we were lucky he was on our section of the A-Train because everything completely crashed and crumpled before us. These new modern trains can’t even take out a deer because they are working on making a deer-walk over the freeway but some deer like to travel in caves.

Anyways, Sister Margaret was also on her way to work. A sweet old lady. She points at Mr. Reeves, the former Father, and says for us all, “He’s got sacrament biscuits!”

It was true. The old man was in the habit of caring around a wafer in his spent Altoid container and it’s not so much that we just missed breakfast and would probably be late for work – we all wanted to signify that nature hadn’t killed us and allow the man to say his majic words and take the Lord’s Supper.

Reeves was very old and might have said the prayer wrong. I don’t know. We all came over to get our little gifts of the gold. Some people even realized there wasn’t enough wafer for everybody so we split the Sacrament in half. They were very chewy, made by holy bakers of amazing precisions several years before.

Mr. Father Reeves kept blessing people as the rescue people were trying to pry us out of the train like we were in a tin can. They had the grinders and the pry bars and we had basic electricity that must have snuck its way back to our cabin. Some child bent down to power up his phone and then the lights began to blink.

As this child was leaning down, a great noxious odor escaped and we all knew he had eaten Cheerios that morning. There was something in the air if you tasted your tongue, slightly nutty, definitely stale by passing through the intestinal foundry and we could not walk away or plug the leak but asked this child to please not try to fix his phone anymore.

After a while, everyone became very giggly. I can’t say that it happened all at once, the laughing spasms came the longer someone tried to hold their tongue to their nose. Missus Idaho was laughing at her own baby who looked up from the babby carriage and laughed right back and then made a splat.

Mr. (Father) Reeves was showing people the inside pockets of his new robes for town. They were very sneaky pockets. Very very sneaky. I asked if I could check the insides for snakes and maybe a Rubik’s Cube because I don’t trust people with extra pockets. They always cheat at cards.

He didn’t mind. So everyone started patting down the old man and he kept laughing and carrying on like he never received a cavity search before. We found nothing. He was still tempted, I believe, but at that time he was tremendously clean.

The workers finally pried the door open and by California Law said that we had to go to the hospital to make sure the train company didn’t cause any permanent damage. Every single one of us said we would sign an order Against Medical Advice. Even the child with the cell phone mysteriously wanted to wander on to school though he had a perfect excuse to get out of calculus classes and whatever pop quiz was devised.

So the “rescue” was anticlimactic to the rescuers since we were all so happy. The noxious fumes dissipated over the station tube and the crowd dispersed like sailing people down a gangway who were happy for their freedom and tripping on acid.

“Mr. Driver, could you please take me to xxxxxx.” I bent to tip him in advance even though I understand that tips before service are actually a bribe.

“Hey buddy, that address doesn’t exist. See?”

He pointed at the taxi GPS screen which was a new feature. The old taxi drivers used to always say “I’m better than any map’ and they would often prove the point by circumventing traffic jams. The good ones talked throught their navigation choices and the bad ones hummed in foreign tongues with curses designed to kill other drivers

I thought this was funny and bent my head.

“Where we going, buddy?”

I had to ask if the driver was Canadian. You would be surprise how many Canadians live amongst us and are rarely ever caught though they have certain vowels they cannot pronounce like “a”.

The driver was very quiet because a Canadian or Canadian Geese would probably be blamed for the train crash. We all knew it was an American Bambi Deer but some people like to point to British Columbia as the reason our economy and beer sales suffer.

He whispered, “Where can I bring you, bub?”

That was a dead giveaway. Yankees don’t call each other bub anymore. No. Never. This driver was fifty year too young to use such language but the Canadians only get movies that are very old so we can test them against the new vocabularies. If a person over 35 says “rizz” they are probably an American Child who cannot pronounce “charisma.” (We try to keep our vocabularies different to be able to point them out to I.C.E. easier).

Also, since there is a lack of other foreign nationals in the land at the moment, the State Department has offered up to fifty thousand dollars to turn them in. There are extra dollars available if anyone finds a Canadian near Turkey Day and puts a turkey feather in their cap or belt loop.

Also, if anyone can help capture a Canadian in late October, during the commemoration of the burning of our White House, then we will pay the full union labor cost of their toil to rebuild the white house for no pay. Currently, we are seeking Canadians to build a dance hall in the east wing. Canadians are excellent at mud and spackle.

So I tried to remember the address of my local FBI field office. This is a government facility that is very useful for Scam Callers and minor terrorist that you catch throwing soccer balls in your yard.

Of course I had no anger toward this Canadian, I was still under the happy fart spray and the questionable wafer. Rent was simply coming due in a week and it was important to eat more calories this month because we have to pack on pounds for the cold winter.

We drove to the FBI field office and I began to sing.

Come to think of it, we don’t actually have too many ICE houses. How does a person get paid?

I began to ask the driver “How long does it take to get your taxes back, again? “ because it seemed to me that a Canadian wouldn’t know, or if he was just playing coy he might be able to help me understand that if I turned him in would I be paid in a reasonable amount of time? I really wanted to try the new Ramen-ya instead of making ramen at home with my own onions and capers. This man could at least represent a beautiful meal for a day.

The radio in the Taxi wasn’t digital it was old school analog and the disc jockey (who obviously was teaching this Canadian our American English) was talking about the survivors of Ace Train 992 having been exposed to a toxic event.

The Canadian looked back at the worms coming out of the sides of my eyes. “Hey Buddy, wasn’t that your car on the train?”

“Hmmm?”

He wasn’t being very funny. I wondered why. Everything is funny on a monday when you have to ride a train into a city to see your mother in Intensive Care. A person is suppose to stop and bring flowers to their mother. They should not stop and seek the redemptive value of a Canadian Car driver and hope that a reward would pay for their mother’s bills. One life cannot pay for another.

It’s like perma-grin. You can try to be grim but eventually get like Uncle Albert floating before Mary Poppins and talking about a man with one leg named Sam.

“What was the name of his other leg?”

“Eh?”

“I love to laugh… hahaha hahaha.”

Oh my gosh. The Canadian knew my song. We started singing at the top of our lungs all the way through stubborn traffic. “I love to laugh… haha hahaha.”

I got out at the red light. A woman had her head out a window and I just took off and kissed her and then got back in. “Carry on driver.”

The Canadian… (Saint George or something) said we couldn't continue driving because of the traffic jam and this lady took her parasol out from where parasols hide. She existed the vehicle and came over to my rented hack and opened the door and slid right in.

“YOu can’t play with a girl like that.”

She batted her eyes.

I was very terrified that I would have to get married on the way to seeing my mother and that this woman in a victorian dress with doily gloves and the lacy parasol would perhaps find some ancient reason not to get along with her. I mean it was funny. How many mothers had come back from the brink of death after major surgery to yell at their daughter-in-laws like a sacred duty?

“Sheryl?” I put out my hand limply and stifled a deep thunderous laugh. I need to explode all over the cab but it wasn’t the time.

Sheryl leaned forward and said she was a “...modern woman. You understand?” She said this with an octave lower than Kathleen Turner and obviously wanted me to know that I was going to be the one cooking dinner with no shoes and bending over to put away dishes.

George, the sacrificial car driver, had to give me the psst. St. George goes, “pssst…” taps me on the shoulder and cocks the thumb back, “You know that’s a man?”

I had not even considered it.

Would my mother still yell at a man dressed in victorian armaments which was necessary to prolong her life so that the fight wasn’t over? Sherryl batted her eyes and the lashes were so violently forced down that one of them started to unpeel from the lid. Georges could no longer watch and he honked to his comrades in the other yellow cabs and the line moved very slowly as my grin of honeymoon joy couldn’t go away.

I tried starting the next verse myself, ‘I love to laugh?’

No one gave the cantor of the liturgy, And the people say: “haaa haa.”

No. It was a very sad car ride and I had to confess to Saint George that if was very nice the FBI would only fly him north, pay me some money to marry Sherryl and get some Ramen, and they had the authority to make us legal so I could see if mom still had the living will to attack her new daughter-in-law. It was going to be a good plan.

George and Sherryl seemed to have some hidden telepathy and they both sorta leaned to their left sides. Like they had an invisible book like the Dictionary of Human Understanding under their right cheek. George saw another traffic jam coming and as the car slowly came to a stop, both the driver and bride popped right out of the car.

I haven’t seen them since but am starting to feel funny.