Elmo knew from the start that he would be a hermit. His father was a hermit, and a good one. Mrs. Frumpkin, sadly, died giving birth to Elmo.

The day Elmo turned nine, his father let him out of the family cave for the first time. This is normal educational protocol for apprentice hermits, as it nurtures a healthy mistrust of the senses. By ten Elmo possessed the faculties of the average adult.

Young Frumpkin's precocity most probably saved his life, for during the winter of his eleventh year, Elmo lost his father. This struck quite a blow to the lad, for he knew but one other person, a kindly Park Ranger named Quigly who happened past the Frumpkin estate once or twice a year. In a cruel coincidence Ranger Quigly lost his job that very spring to federal budget cuts, so Elmo was left to fend for himself.

The next several decades were passed in sublime contemplation amid the birds, fawns and squirrels, who proved all the company a man really needed. Perhaps Elmo would never have come down from the woods at all were it not for a chance meeting that took place late one summer afternoon as he was bathing in his favorite pond.

The meeting was not altogether pleasant for Elmo, whose social graces were lacking to say the least. When three lost girl scouts happened upon our hairy, naked hero, he blushed in eighteen shades of red, and their giggles added a streak of purple.

"Oh my," he said as he scrambled up the bank for his breechcloth. "You must be...girls. How do you do, my name is Elmo." Elmo seldom spoke, and he hadn't spoken to humans in years. His voice was soft and neutral, like a shy professor's.

"How do you do," said the tallest of the girls as she gaped at Elmo. "We're lost. Can you help us find our way?"

This question filled Elmo with both terror and hope. The terror arose from his years of seclusion; he had never once strayed from the sanctuary of his estate, not even to seek a doctor. The hope arose from the memory of his father's deathbed, on which the elder Frumpkin had foretold a great mission for Elmo; perhaps the three little cherubs were a sign that his mission was at hand.

"I will help you find your way," he said as he stuffed himself into his dhoti, which the girl scouts mistook for a diaper. "But first I must fetch some things from my cave. Won't you come along?"

The young darlings had heard stories about strange men. When Elmo invited them into a cave, they screamed and ran away. Unfortunately for the hermit, several patrols from the local National Guard were searching nearby, and they soon had poor Elmo hogtied and semiconscious. Shortly thereafter a colonel approached. After giving his captive a few quick kicks in the ribs, an interrogation began.

"Whatcha doin' in that diaper, hippie?" the colonel scowled.

Elmo had to struggle to breath, but another kick helped to open his lungs. "I was bathing," he groaned.

"In front o' them littluns? Why, you must be some kinda sex pervert." The colonel let loose one last boot to the groin and ordered the suspect prepared for transport to the county jail.

A few days later Elmo woke up on the floor of his cell. The local sheriff was sitting over him with a bottle of smelling salts.

"Welcome to Madden County, Mister. I'm Sher'f Gimby," he drawled through his plug of tobacco. "Hale Gimby. You know what we do with folks like you 'round here? It ain't perty, believe you me."

Elmo's vision was blurred, and his head ached. He moaned and rolled over. "I understand it is the custom of your people to hold fair and impartial trials," he said without malice.

"Oh, you'll get a trial alright," the sheriff snickered. "Won't he, Judge?" The laughter that ensued startled Elmo, for it came from all around. A blinding spotlight just behind the corpulent sheriff was the only light in the room.

"Who's there?" Elmo asked gently, and the laughter grew louder.

"Just the bug man," said the sheriff as the local exterminator stepped into the spotlight with a tank and nozzle. "He's here to delouse ya. Now take off that diaper and hold yer arms up over yer head."

"My garment is called a dhoti," said Elmo. "And I am afraid I cannot allow you to delouse me, as the killing of any living creature violates my religious beliefs."

The sheriff waited for the hoots and guffaws coming from the darkness to subside. Then he stood up and kicked Elmo in the teeth. "Strip 'im, boys," he growled. Elmo was quickly stripped by expert hands and tied by the wrists to opposite ends of his six-by-six foot cell. The exterminator proceeded to spray the hermit from head to toe with a random mixture of pesticides left over from contracts with the county.

Elmo, who always drained his water through a screen to avoid killing even the smallest critter, felt his little friends scrambling for cover beneath the chemical onslaught; not one made it out alive. A long hosing with icewater swept their tiny corpses down the drain.

"Now put these on," said Sheriff Gimby as a striped prison uniform hit Elmo in the head.

"I am sorry, but I can wear only my dhoti," Elmo sighed. "The stripes on this garment are signs of vanity."

The darkness laughed once more, and the sheriff nearly swallowed his plug. "You hear that?" he chortled. "He wants to wear his dydee! He wants to wear his dydee!"

Before Elmo could correct the lawman's vocabulary a billy club to the temple relieved him of the obligation. The next thing our hero remembered was being placed in the witness chair by a pair of large blond bailiffs.

"Do you thwear to tell the twuth, the whole twuth, and nothing but the twuth, tho help you God?" said one of the bailiffs as he placed Elmo's hand roughly on a thick black book.

"Why, I cannot do otherwise," the hermit groaned. "But I believe it would be immoderate to invoke the help of the gods."

"Silence!" snapped the judge. "The defendant will answer appropriately. Yes or no, Mr. Frumpkin."

"I humbly apologize, sir," said Elmo.

The entire courtroom gasped. It seems that Elmo, lacking the educational advantage of the modern television law drama, had mistaken the judge's bluegray hair for the powdered wigs worn by male courtroom officials in his history books.

Judge Prudence Willborn Snell was not amused.

"Sarcasm, Mr. Frumpkin, has no place in these proceedings," she sneered as the wrinkles on her face formed a scowl that resembled the new maps of Eastern Europe. "We are here to dispense justice. I hold you in contempt of this court and sentence you to thirty days. Now proceed."

"But I have contempt for no one," Elmo protested, entirely out of order. "And how can one 'dispense' Jus..."

"That will be thirty days more," snapped the judge. She had a large red mole where Minsk would be. "One more word from the defendant and I shall have him shackled."

"Again I apolo..."

When Elmo came to a moment later, his wrists and ankles had been cuffed and chained together through a metal loop that dangled at his groin. His prison uniform itched him severely, and he had a knot on his head.

"Mr. Frumpkin," said a voice. "Mr. Frumpkin, can you hear me?" The prosecutor was a fat man with a small head and a bad case of halitosis. His breath was as efficient as the sheriff's smelling salts, only with a hint of pastrami.

Elmo gagged and sat bolt upright. "Yes, I can hear you," he moaned.

"Very well. Is it not true that you were caught wearing nothing but a DIAPER as you tried to entice three young GIRL SCOUTS into a CAVE near Passahoochee Park?" The prosecutor paced presumptuously forth and back as he spoke, and he gestured towards the jury whenever he emphasized a word.

"My garment is called a dhoti," Elmo responded blandly.

"Yes or no, Mr. Frumpkin," snarled the judge.

"Yes, I suppose that is more or less the truth."

"And is it not also true," continued the prosecutor, "that you PARADED around, absolutely NAKED, right in front of these same girl scouts?"

"They walked up as I was bathing," said Elmo.

"YES OR NO, Mr. Frumpkin," screeched the Judge.

"Yes, that is true."

"Is it not true "FURTHERMORE, " the prosecutor bellowed, "that for the past several years you have been living ILLEGALLY on public lands, with no visible means of support, no declaration of taxable income, no social security card, and NO TOILET!?"

The jury, which had been impassive thus far, sat up and took note at this mention of toilets. A murmur passed through the courtroom, and more than one onlooker muttered something about the sanitariness of the public system.

"I do not understand the question," said Elmo after a pause. "I live where I have always lived, and to the same purpose."

"Mr. Frumpkin," sighed the judge. "If you continue to exasperate me I shall have you tried in absentia. Now, is that what we want?"

"I cannot say," Elmo responded. "I have never been to Ab..."

The next time Elmo came to, he was laid out on a fine leather couch. A man in a white coat was just withdrawing a needle from the groggy hermit's arm.

"So, Mr. Frumpkin," said a momentarily distant voice. "Have you ever required psychiatric counseling before?"

Elmo shook his head. His face and scalp had been shaved clean, and in place of the striped prison uniform he now wore a white paper smock that was open at the rear.

He felt a tingle as he sat up.

"No sir," he said as his eyes focused on a small, frail man engulfed in an enormous beard and a baggy suit. "I have never required....anyone."

The psychiatrist, a certain Heinrich van Schwanken, pursed his lips and stroked his beard thoughtfully. "I see," he said after a long pause. "So, you did not require, for example...your MOTHER?"

"My mother died in childbirth," Elmo explained.

Dr. von Schwanken rocked in his chair pensively. Clearly the man was very, very disturbed. "I see," he finally said. "You must feel a tremendous amount of guilt, no? Perhaps the type of guilt that would explain your little...problems?"

Elmo sighed mildly. "To what are you referring?" he asked.

"Well, there's this little matter of public indecency to begin with. Not to mention contempt of court, tax evasion, vagrancy, trespassing, solicitation of minors, resisting arrest, violation of the sanitary code...shall I go on?"

When Elmo failed to respond the doctor leaned back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head, as bureaucrats are wont to do when they feel the urge to exercise authority. "You know, Mr. Frumpkin, that without my help you may spend the rest of your life here in our little community. Don't you think it would be wise to cooperate with me? I only want to help."

"By all means," said Elmo, who had begun to guess what he was in for. "Perhaps I do feel a little guilty. About my mother, I mean."

"Very good," cooed the doctor. "Now we are getting somewhere..."

Two weeks later Elmo was deemed stable enough to be integrated into the general population of the J. Edgar Pipkin Memorial Penitentiary, an institution known for its pioneering work in the rehabilitation of sex offenders. Our hero was fortunate enough to share a cell with one Hannibal Purdy, a handsome Negro weightlifter and fashion designer who had allegedly been cured of transvestitism by Dr. von Schwanken's Neurosmotic Testosterone Shock Therapy.

The procedure had failed to cure Hannibal's sexual preference problem; but the subsequent progress made in combating the rising trend of cross-dressing, which threatened the moral fabric of the nation, was a feather in the good doctor's cap.

One of the first things Elmo noticed about Hannibal was the small plastic tube protruding from the base of his skull. The tube gave van Schwanken permanent access to the cerebellum, allowing for the timed release of various enzymes and hormones directly into Hannibal's centers of neuromuscular control. (Hannibal was quite famous in psychiatric circles under the pseudonym "Mr. P.")

Elmo soon learned that Hannibal's personality could be somewhat mercurial. At times the muscular Negro acted like a cheerful old slave nanny, nurturing the other inmates in a sugary voice that would put Aunt Jemima to shame. But at other times he became Mr. P., a wild-eyed gang banger prone to fits of delusional psychosis. The transformation from Aunt Jemima to Mr. P and back took place almost daily. Elmo preferred Aunt Jemima, though he eventually became fond of both of Hannibal's personalities.

After several more weeks of therapy Elmo was deemed stable enough to join his fellow inmates on the road gang. Every morning a bus would take the prisoners out into the countryside to pick up litter, dig trenches, lay tar, plant signs, or otherwise play in traffic.

One day the bus stopped beside a bridge that spanned the Passahoochee River, which you will deduce, I am sure, gave its name to the National Park where our hero learned the hermit trade. Elmo was quick to volunteer for the treacherous task of dangling beneath the bridge on a rope to remove the graffiti left there by redneck Romeos and radical malcontents.

At noontime Elmo volunteered to forego his dinner break. This was not an unusual request coming from the repentant hermit, whose nickname among his captors was "Jesus" due to his appearance and his scrupulous lifestyle.

"Sure, go 'head Jesus," laughed the guard as he sat down to polish off a sixpack.

Two hours later Elmo was gone. "Jesus fuckin' Christ!" swore the guard (who did not believe in mortal sin.)

"Could be," said Hannibal Purdy (who did.) "Least now he free. Mo' den I can say fu you, cracka."

Before the soused guard could react, Hannibal sprinted onto the bridge and dove like a crazy Mexican into the rocky foam of the Passahoochee a hundred feet below.

"Stupid nigger," the guard muttered. "Never live through THAT. Thar goes ma goddamn pro-motion."

Elmo poled towards the middle of the river. The crude, hastily assembled log raft slid lazily into the current. A chorus of frogs and crickets chirped and gronked from the riverbanks, punctuated by an occasional hootowl or the splash of a diving beaver.

Something rustling in the leanto behind him startled Elmo. "Lawdy Lawd," yawned Hannibal, "I needs ta git me some DUDS!" Elmo sighed with relief--it was Aunt Jemima.

Hannibal crawled out onto the port bow clad in his boxer shorts, his shiny black skin twitching in the chill night air of late November. "Mebbe you should pull up an' let me hijack a clothesline, Mo," he said. "We thuddy mile downstream by now. Ain't nobody seen us floatin' on dis log nights, 'cep dat ole fisherman, an' he drunk."

Elmo agreed. The loincloth he had fashioned out of leaves and twigs suited him just fine, but with winter approaching and little chance of hunting down a skin, there was simply no choice. He poled the raft to shore near a railroad bridge, where there was sure to be a shack or two.

A few minutes later Hannibal returned wearing a lovely print dress and a red checkered bonnet. He had a pair of overalls and a flannel shirt for Elmo. Best of all, he had managed to wrest a large soup bone from a sleepy bulldog, and there was some meat left on it. "Here, you fust," he said, handing the bone to Elmo. "I's got sumpin' ta show ya. Looky here, chile!"

Hannibal hiked up the flowery dress to reveal a starched white girdle, and then he bent down to show off his new wire support bra, which he had already stuffed with six pairs of argyle socks. "I needs ta take it IN a tad. She must be a BIG woman!" he roared, and then he posed demurely with his hand on his hip. "Lawdy Lawd, I feels good!"

Elmo chuckled. The sound of the enraged bulldog followed them downriver for a while, then faded to an echo as they rounded a bend. Before them the Passahoochee opened into a broad, sandy-bottomed series of braids and oxbows that stretched to the horizon. They had passed out of the foothills and onto the coastal plain.

"I was afraid of this, " Elmo sighed. "We put in downstream from the cave. I'm farther from home than ever. "

"Don't you fret none, Mo," Hannibal purred as he wrapped a big chunky arm around the hermit. "I knows dis paht o' da riva. It go pass da Big City, where ma people stay. Yessah, you gonna meet my momma. We take gooooood care o' you."

After three more nights of travel the two fugitives finally saw the lights of the Big City illuminating the southern sky. Hannibal knew the waterfront district by heart, and he soon had the raft moored beside an abandoned textile warehouse near the Sixty-fifth Street Drawbridge.

Elmo followed his guide up gullies and through sewers and over fences topped with barb wire, until they finally reached an alley that led between two office towers and out onto Sixty-fifth Street. A derelict whistled at Hannibal and proposed an unnatural act.

"Don' pay him no mind," whispered the transvestite, a little flattered. "And don' look no one in da eye."

Two young hoodlums accosted Hannibal at the entrance to the alley. "Hey, mama, you wan' su' rock?" mouthed the smaller of the two presumptuously, for he rarely saw a white man in the presence of a black woman in that neighborhood unless something illicit was afoot. "Clean shit, baby, clean shit."

"Git out ma face, turkey," hissed Hannibal.

The youngsters smiled broadly and started to laugh. It seems that Hannibal's choice of the vernacular was somewhat outdated. "Turkey? TURKEY?" roared the larger of the two. "Who you callin' turkey, you skanky ho?"

"You see anyone else in dis alley?" asked Hannibal. "Now git out ma way fo' I bust yo' little black ass."

At that, one of the hoodlums jumped on Hannibal and the other on Elmo. The last thing the scrappy hermit remembered was being struck from behind with the butt of a semiautomatic assault rifle.

The following morning three young hoodlums were found by sanitation workers lying unconscious in the alley. Hannibal Purdy was no man to mess with. Then again, it was said in later years that Elmo Frumpkin could wrassle a fishhead from a grizzly bear, and that he once killed a bobcat with his bare hands.

Elmo woke up in Hannibal's arms. The strapping Negro had carried his little friend from the Sixty-fifth Street Bridge clear up to the southside projects, where the widow Mrs. Hannibal Purdy, Sr. lived.

"Wake up, Mo," pleaded Hannibal. "C'mon, wake up."

"Hannibal? Where are we?" groaned Elmo.

"We at momma's. Now stand up skraight." Hannibal rapped on the door. A few moments later it cracked open.

"Momma?" whispered Hannibal. "Momma, it me, Hannibal. "

The door swung open and a huge old woman in a print dress waddled out onto the stoop. "Good Gawd, I don' believes it!" she squealed in a voice to drown out Gabriel. "It's ma baby! We thought you was dead! We thought you was DEAD!"

"Naw, Momma, not yet," wept Hannibal. "Let's git inside. Dey might be watchin'."

The widow Purdy's apartment was small and dank. The single window was covered with a thick blanket. Portraits of Jesus and other colored martyrs filled the walls, and a photograph of Hannibal sat in a frame on top of the TV set.

"Dey said you was killt woikin' on da bridge," the old woman sobbed as she gave her son a bearhug. "Dey said you went crazy an' dove off an' drownt."

Ms. Purdy cried and carried on for what seemed like an hour, and then she went straight for the kitchen. While she whipped up some collard greens and fatback, Hannibal related the story of his escape.

During the after dinner mints a loud thud came from the bedroom. "Momma, it someone breakin' in!" whispered Hannibal as he reached under the couch for the family Magnum.

"No, no," laughed the widow. "It just the Reveren'. We been keepin' compny." Just then a man about Hannibal's size emerged from the bedroom. He was wearing Hannibal's monogrammed pink bathrobe, which fit his frame nicely.

"Lawd God!" roared the Reverend Slappy Eisenhower upon seeing Hannibal. "If it ain't Hannibal Purdy, in the flesh! We thought you was DEAD, son. What you DOIN' here?"

As Hannibal finished telling his story for the second time, angry voices were heard on the stoop. In a flash the door fell splintered to the ground, and a dozen police officers stormed the little apartment. Mrs. Purdy just barely had time to slip her wig on "Hannah" as she sat her substantial girth right down on top of Elmo, who literally disappeared into the couch beneath her.

Thinking him to be Hannibal, the misguided officers jumped on top of the Reverend, who fell to preaching loudly as he was subdued and handcuffed. The lawmen regarded this as evidence that the prisoner was intoxicated and therefore hostile, so they proceeded to render him unconscious before hauling him to the precinct.

"We got 'im, boys," said a sergeant as the officers ransacked the little apartment. "Slimy devil ran straight home to Mammy. We got 'im, alright."

By the time the Reverend Eisenhower came out of his coma and convinced a judge that he was not Hannibal Purdy, Elmo and the real Hannibal were a hundred miles downstream.

Just south of the Big City the Passahoochee River is fed by a number of large tributaries that flow down from the foothills. Here the river widens and deepens as it runs through the low country, necessitating the rigging of a rudder on the crude raft inhabited by our heroes.

Elmo welcomed the change of scenery, but Hannibal fell to worrying about his mother. "If dey evah touch her da way dey touch me, I gwine kill 'em all, kill' em all," he repeated again and again.

One day the worried Negro began to curse Dr. van Schwanken violently. Elmo feared an appearance by Mr. P., who hadn't been around since their escape. But instead of going into a rage, Hannibal gripped the plastic tube protruding from his skull and yanked it out so hard that blood spurted clear off the edge of the raft.

"Dey neva stick nothin' in me agin," he said, and Elmo believed it. "I's gwine take a nap."

The next morning Hannibal was himself again. He insisted on landing at the next bridge so he could go find some new clothes. "I ain't floatin' down no riva lookin' like dis," he said.

By evening he had procured two new dresses and leopard-stripe leotard for himself, and for Elmo he had a handsome blue suit complete with a bright red bow-tie. "Now we can go out," he purred.

Several days later the two were fishing near dusk when the strains of a chorus rose up from beyond the east bank. As it grew darker a fire lit the sky. Hannibal insisted on investigating.

Dangling the hem of an aqua chiffon gown he had ingeniously fashioned, Hannibal led Elmo through a cornfield and up to the edge of a meadow. A grand tent had been erected in the center of the meadow, and a hundred or more people were gathered around a bonfire beside it, singing to the heavens.

When the two fugitives stepped into the ring of light surrounding the fire, the singing stopped abruptly. A small man in a black suit stepped out from the circle and spoke.

"Welcome, sister, welcome, brother," he said rather dramatically. "We welcome all kinds here."

"Th-thank you," answered Hannibal.

"Th-thank YOU." said Elmo.

"Praise the Lord!" hollered the stranger, and the whole congregation bellowed a response.

"Pa-raise the Lawd!" sang Hannibal, and again the circle responded in kind. Hannibal began clapping his meaty hands like cymbals, and then he launched into a spirited tenor rendition of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." The revelers joined in with gusto.

After a while the preacher called everyone under the tent. As he began his sermon, a large wooden box was brought up to the pulpit. The preacher reached in and produced some of the biggest rattlesnakes Hannibal or Elmo had ever seen.

Soon no less than twelve of the rattlers were hanging in coils from the preacher's neck and outstretched arms as he danced and hollered the Scripture. "Who among you is free of sinnnnnnn," he shouted, and then he challenged his sheep to take up the vipers as a test of faith. A few brave souls handled one or two of the snakes, but no one dared to lurch and flail about like the preacher did.

Elmo was fascinated by the goings-on. In the spirit of the moment he marched up to the preacher and held out his arms, cooing quietly in a language only a boy raised in a cave could know. The serpents slithered straight onto the hermit and began to mingle with his shaggy hair and beard, which had grown back considerably since the trial.

The congregation gasped. No one had ever seen such a thing. All eyes turned towards the preacher, who stood glowering at the giggling hermit.

"SAAAAAY-tan! DEEEEE-mon!" screeched the little preacher. Trembling and pointing his finger, he circled Elmo twice, shouting all the while. "Fornicator! Miscegenator! BLASSSS-phemer! HERETIC! LIBERAL!"

At that the preacher began snatching the rattlers off of Elmo; several of the serpents bit the Reverend despite his immense faith. Hannibal grabbed Elmo by the hand and yanked him away from the pulpit.

As the transvestite dragged a stunned Elmo back through the cornfield and onto the raft, the singing of the revelers resumed at a more feverish pitch. Sparks flew from the fire as the preacher, hallucinating wildly from the poison coursing through his veins, gave a sermon unmatched in those parts for decades.

After the revival incident, Elmo and Hannibal stuck more closely to the river. Except for an occasional raid on a root cellar, they were content to eat the catfish and bream they caught fishing from the raft and the wild strawberries and huckleberries that Elmo was so adept at finding.

One day as Hannibal was landing a particularly enormous catfish, a ranger in a green bass boat approached and hailed them. Ten minutes later they were under arrest for fishing without a license from an unregistered craft with no flotation devices.

Then, of course, there was the little matter of moral turpitude that arose when a fresh deputy transporting Hannibal tried to cop a feel.

The following morning Elmo and Hannibal were scheduled to be arraigned in the old county courthouse, which stood in the center of the town square just across the street from the jail. When the time came, the prisoners were shackled and led out of the jail and across the square on a sort of spontaneous perp walk. They paused on the courthouse steps so the cops, county commissioners and citizens gathered there could gawk at Hannibal.

"Shore looks like a wummin," said one.

"Could be took care of," added another as he fingered his hunting knife.

A small crowd began to form around the Negro transvestite and the hairy little hermit. Reference was made to a town called Jefferson in the next county, where non-elective surgery was occasionally performed by a concerned Caucasian citizen's group.

"We gots ta git outta here," whispered Hannibal; and then he cold-cocked the deputy, who stood beside him holding his chains like a leash. The crowd jumped back for the most part, though three or four rednecks proceeded to join the resulting fray.

Hannibal and Elmo acquitted themselves nicely despite the odds. They weren't far from making good their escape when by coincidence, or fate if you prefer, a long black limousine pulled into the square at that very moment. Inside sat Shantavius P. Winkle, a flamboyant wrestling promoter who enjoyed cruising the backroads in search of talent.

Hannibal Purdy was exactly what he was looking for.

Shantavius watched with growing interest as the two shackled fugitives tangled with the mob. Hannibal leveled half a dozen law officers and a few of the locals, tossing them around like bobo dolls. Elmo held his own, fighting from his back like a crazed wild animal, as if he had learned some primeval martial art from the badgers and mountain lions with whom he once lived.

The limo squealed around the square and screeched to a stop beside the fleeing fugitives, who were struggling clumsily with their shackles. A door flew open and two goons leapt out, throwing our heroes roughly into the back seat beside a delighted Mr. Winkle.

"Oooooooh, you two were DIVINE!" he said as the limo sped away. "Simply divine."

"Thank you, sah," Hannibal replied. "I don't believe we's had the pleasure..."

"Speak for yourself, honey," chuckled the promoter. "I'm Shantavius P. Winkle, of Winkle Management, Inc. Wrasslin's my game. PRO Wrasslin'. I want you boys to sign a contract, right this minute."

A week later, Hannibal and Elmo were back in the Big City preparing to debut at the Municipal Auditorium under the ring name "Aunt Jomama and the Cave Man." Their opponents were the Interstate Tag Team Champions, Roadkill Maloney and Bull "Hog" Tate, better known as the Southern States Tag Team Champions, Highway 666.

Hog and Roadkill dressed in post-Armageddon biker wear with a Confederate twist. Their signature maneuver was to throw their opponents headfirst into the sixth row, where six bikers sat ready to bash them with motorcycle parts. The crowds particularly enjoyed the fact that Highway 666 specialized in defeating opponents whose credentials were somewhat suspect.

The match went along just as expected until shortly before the commercial break, when a gang of police officers began surrounding the ring. It seems that a sharp copper had recognized the pair from a promotional poster placed by Winkle Management outside a bar called the Flame' (that's pronounced, "fla-may".) The crowd booed loudly and pelted the cops with cups of beer.

At the point when Roadkill was supposed to toss Elmo out to the bikers, a gruff sergeant stepped onto the ring apron and held up his hand to stop the proceedings. Roadkill didn't have much respect for the law, and he seldom missed an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the fans; so with his right hand he scooped Elmo gently off the mat and onto his massive shoulder, while with his left he popped the sergeant squarely in the nose. The crowd went wild as Roadkill sent Elmo soaring out of the ring.

Hog knew a dramatic moment when he saw one, too, and so he pressed Hannibal clear over his head and heaved the dazed transvestite out of the ring and over the line of cops and into the arms of the six hungry bikers. Elmo landed a split second later, on top of Hannibal's head, owing to a higher trajectory.

The angered law officers made a dash for the sixth row, only to be beaten back by the bikers, who were happy to help Hannibal and Elmo if it meant a chance to beat up some cops. Besides, they could always say they thought the cops were part of the act. The officers were quickly dispatched, and then Roadkill himself whisked the hermit and the transvestite out of the arena and onto the backs of two waiting Harley Davidsons.

Late that night, Elmo and Hannibal rumbled across the state line in the company of Highway 666 and twenty or thirty partying members of a local motorcycle riding club. Hannibal had spent the loser's share of the purse acquiring a cheap AMF-era Harley and two dirty black leather outfits from a recently enriched hoodlum, which provided the pair with both transportation and welcome relief from the oncoming winter.

Early the next morning Hannibal stopped at a saloon to call his mother, only to find that her number had been disconnected. Sadly, the widow Purdy had been evicted from her apartment shortly after the arrest of the Reverend. Due to bureaucratic neglect, she had lost her pension and was now living on a heating grate at the corner of Sixty-fifth and Witherby.

"How we gon' fin' momma?" whined Hannibal as he and Elmo stood on the doorstep of the widow's abandoned apartment. "How she gon' take care o' hersef'?"

Elmo didn't have an answer. Mrs. Purdy had no way to leave a forwarding address, and the Reverend Slappy Eisenhower's Church of the Gospel Saints Jubilee had been closed shortly after his arrest and coma.

A derelict living in the fake belfry of the storefront church gave the only clue to the widow's whereabouts when he told our heroes of a squatter's encampment downtown at Memorial Park. By the time Hannibal and Elmo reached the encampment, it was nearing nightfall.

"Who goes there?" shouted a voice from the bushes as the pair passed beneath the wrought iron arch at the entrance to the park. "Halt and state your business."

"I be lookin' fo' my momma, Mizz Purdy," Hannibal answered, though the owner of the voice had yet to make an appearance. "She a big black woman, 'bout sevendy year ole."

A long pause ensued, after which a man in an ancient green suit stepped out into the open and bowed graciously. "I am Quigly," he said, statesmanlike, "Consular General of our little community here. A woman fitting that description did take up residence recently."

Elmo was stunned. For indeed it was the very same Ranger Quigly who, you will remember, had befriended the Frumpkin family back in happier days; and he seemed to have risen substantially in position.

"Ranger Quigly!" Elmo cried. "It's me! Elmo, Elmo Frumpkin! You knew my father..."

"Why yes," the old Ranger sighed. "I do see the resemblance. Though you were only a lad when last I saw you."

"'Bout Momma," Hannibal interrupted. "She here?"

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Purdy," chuckled Quigly as he stroked his stubbly gray beard. "She lives over on the east side, by Witherby Street. I'll take you there." Hannibal and Elmo followed the old man clear across the park to a heating grate near the East Gate, where a crude dwelling had been rigged out of cardboard and plastic.

"Mrs. Purdy? Mrs. Purdy?" Quigly called. "Are you home?"

"Momma?" whispered Hannibal. "Momma, it me."

The widow sprang out of the little structure with surprising speed and smothered Hannibal with hugs and smooches; then she fell to weeping as she told the sad story of the Reverend's coma and her subsequent eviction. It seems that all of her papers had been misplaced when the policemen executed their search of the apartment, which left her unable to reclaim her pension.

As darkness fell, Quigly, Elmo and the Purdys shared two cans of chili that the Ranger had procured while foraging in the business district. Quigly cooked the chili over an open fire, which brought back pleasant memories to our homesick hermit.

After the meal, Hannibal and the widow retired into her new home while Elmo and Ranger Quigly left to stand guard at the Main Gate. By sunrise Elmo had seen more squad cars and ambulances than he even knew existed--not to mention a mugging and a drive-by shooting. The squatters, understanding the relative enforcement of trespassing laws, hadn't chosen the best part of town for their camp.

Quigly spent the following day teaching Elmo how to forage in the Big City. It proved infinitely more difficult and dangerous than foraging on the former Frumpkin estate, as the competition around the city's dumpsters had reached an all-time high.

When Elmo returned to the Purdy homestead that evening with a can of beans and two grapefruits, he was surprised to find the widow stooped over a portable charcoal grill cooking babyback ribs. "Oh, thank you so much, Elmo," she gushed as if she were cooking for the crowned heads of Europe. "Jus' what we be needin'."

Upon hearing Elmo, Hannibal crawled yawning out the front flap in his aqua chiffon gown, which he had retrieved along with Elmo's blue suit the previous night when he went down to the raft to hide the Harley. "It no good keepin' no bike 'round here," he explained to the hermit. "I hid it good. Case we needs ta run agin."

About that time the widow called the pair to the dinner blanket, where they lit into the ribs and fixins like starved pups. Some neighbors began to gather in anticipation of the leftovers, and then Ranger Quigly showed up with a fat white man dressed in a stained and spotted double-breasted suit.

"I want you to meet Senator Wentworth," Quigly said deferentially as he and his guest sat down to eat. Mrs. Purdy made up a heaping plate for the ranger, then she slapped a rib and two beans onto the senator's plate. "Senator Wentworth is the Mayor of our...our little compound here," Quigly continued.

During the dessert of fruit salad and pretzels, the mayor gently inquired whether Hannibal had paid his "local" taxes, which so angered the widow that she stood up in a huff and stormed away. It seems that Hannibal had found a night job in the hospitality business, and he had made a cool $275 on his very first night.

After a brief negotiation Hannibal forked over a fifty and the mayor left. Elmo was impressed at the direct and efficient manner in which the local government appeared to operate, though he still didn't quite understand why there were never any policemen in such a lawless area, nor why two policemen had chased Consular General Quigly out of a posh downtown supermarket earlier that afternoon.

Shortly after dark, Hannibal went off to work. Elmo slipped into the Purdy home and went straight to sleep, vowing to look for a job the next day. Whatever it took, the hermit was determined that eventually he would find his way back to his cave on the family estate; but first he had to make sure that Hannibal and Mrs. Purdy were going to be alright.

Elmo was up before dawn. He put on his blue suit and clipped on his red bowtie and headed up Witherby towards the business district. At the intersection of Witherby and Vine, Elmo came upon a road crew shoveling gravel into a series of deep potholes. Several of the crewmen were leaning on their shovels, and there was a spare sitting on the hood of a nearby dumptruck.

Elmo took the spare shovel and started scraping scoops of gravel into the next pothole. The workers watched with amusement for a while, and then the foreman approached the hermit and asked him what he was doing.

"I need to work," said Elmo. "There was an extra shovel."

"Are you fresh off the turnip truck, or what?" chuckled the foreman.

"No sir, I came in on a motorbike," Elmo replied, and he continued shoveling.

At lunchtime, the workers treated Elmo to a three course meal at a hamburger restaurant down the block. Afterwards they drove the hermit to a saloon and purchased some beer. When the time came to go back to work, the foreman took Elmo aside and explained how the municipal budget crisis had necessitated layoffs. The hermit thanked him and graciously accepted the meal as payment for his labor.

Heading back towards the tall office towers of the business district, Elmo came upon a man in a van handing bundles of newspapers to a young boy. The boy proceeded to walk up the street hawking the papers to passersby.

"Excuse me, sir," said the hermit as he approached the van. "I need to work. Do you have a job?"

"Get ben...uh," answered the man, "why, yes, I do, actually." He took a coin out of his pocket and walked to a nearby vending machine, returning with a stack of fresh morning papers. "Here, get rid of these," he said, "and then meet me here in an hour. And DON'T rip me off, you hear?"

"Yes sir, thank you," said Elmo. He took the papers and followed the boy up the road, watching from a distance. The lad strutted cockily up the sidewalk, shouting "Extra, extra! Read all about it! Presidential cyst removed! Extra, extra!"

At the next block, the boy went one way and Elmo the other. The hermit raised a paper and began saying mildly, "Extra, extra. Read all about it. Presidential cyst removed." He handed a paper to a businessman and walked on.

Within the hour Elmo had gotten rid of the entire stack of papers. He made his way back to the waiting van, eager to find out how he would be paid. Unfortunately, the newspaper vendor had failed to mention the part about collecting seventy-five cents per paper, which left our hero nearly fifty dollars in the hole after subtracting his commission.

When Elmo explained that he simply didn't have fifty dollars, the vendor hailed a passing policeman and threatened to have the hermit arrested.

"No, please," Elmo said flatly. "I will work for you until my debt is paid. Perhaps you need some shoveling performed?"

The nice policeman implored the vendor on Elmo's behalf, saying something about the municipal budget crisis causing a shortage of squad car deodorizers. After a heated discussion the vendor agreed to drive Elmo to the newspaper office, where some type of menial arrangement could be worked out.

Two hours later the hermit found himself standing behind a mountain of dirty dishes in the newspaper's cafeteria. A conveyor belt ran past the dishes and through a huge noisy machine that spewed steam and emanated a melange of culinary odors.

The gruff cafeteria manager instructed Elmo in the fine art of dishwashing, then went off to handle the dinner rush. Before long our hero was managing nicely, separating the contents of the busboys' tubs into silverware, plates, and glasses and running them on slats through the machine.

As the dinner crowd peaked and began to dwindle, the busboys doubled their pace, and the chefs began sending back the more grimy implements of their trade. Elmo's job became correspondingly more difficult; it was all he could do to keep the flood of cups and dishes and kitchen tools from overwhelming him.

And then it happened. A five gallon mixing bowl got stuck in the machine just in front of a mound of shot glasses, and all hell broke loose. A tub of plates fell crashing to the floor. A rack of soup bowls followed. Then two cases of soda glasses got wedged in behind the mixing bowl and the shot glasses, causing the conveyor belt to tug and lurch violently.

Elmo tried valiantly to stem the tide of shattering glass. He crawled frantically onto the conveyor belt and began pulling anything he could get his hands on out of the jammed machine, which huffed and bellowed like a dying rhinoceros. But just as he thought he had the guilty mixing bowl in his grasp, Elmo lost his balance and fell headfirst into the machine, which proceeded to pummel him with jets of scalding hot water.

By the time Elmo emerged from the far side of the machine, a small crowd had gathered around the dishwashing station. The cafeteria manager nearly had a coronary, and two busboys quit right on the spot rather than cleaning up the awful mess.

Elmo was led away to the newspaper's accounts receivable department, where his debt was recalculated at three hundred and eighty-seven dollars and sixteen cents, minus the eight dollars and fifty cents he had earned before the accident.

That night, as he lay in his cell, Elmo wondered if he would ever get back to his cave at all. He wondered how Hannibal was doing, and if there were any openings in the hospitality business.

Early the next morning, a tall Negress was tossed into the holding cell that Elmo shared with the teeming dregs of the Big City. It turned out that she was in the hospitality business herself, and she had met Hannibal not two nights ago, as they shared the same agent. She called herself Arethra Bigby.

Arethra knew right off that Elmo wouldn't last long in the city jail. As a professional courtesy she offered to bail the hermit out and to take him back to the squatter's camp.

An hour later, Elmo and Arethra were coasting down Sixty-fifth Street in the back of a yellow taxicab. Arethra put her big strong arm around the hermit and pointed out the sights, the skyscrapers and banks and the capitol building.

As they approached the encampment, traffic slowed to a crawl. There appeared to be some sort of disturbance ahead. Arethra paid the fare and led Elmo up the sidewalk.

When they neared the Main Gate, Elmo gasped. For all that remained of the camp was a tall pile of rubble presided over by a bulldozer and a squad of policemen. A mob of bald youths and reactionaries was milling around the west side of the razed park, cheering its destruction, while hundreds of angry bums and radicals gathered on the east side full of indignation.

As soon as the bald youths saw Arethra, they began shouting taunts. Shortly thereafter a brick hit her in the head, knocking her unconscious. As she lay sprawled across the dirt, the policemen ran to her side and carried her in a most unladylike way to a waiting paddy wagon.

Elmo tried to follow his injured benefactor, but the cops pinned his arms roughly behind his back and hustled him off towards the East Gate. "Stick with yer own, hippie," snarled one of the law officers. "We got enough trouble as it is."

Standing dazed and confused before the mob, Elmo began to despair of ever seeing his friends again. Hannibal would probably head for the raft; but what about the widow?

As the hermit wandered through the crowd, he heard a familiar voice from above. It was Ranger Quigly, who had climbed a dogwood tree to get a better view of the park. Elmo scurried up the tree and took a seat beside his old friend. '

"Looks like a riot brewin'," said the Ranger. "We'd best stay up here."

Sure enough, the two sides began inching towards one another and hurling epithets. The lawmen donned riot gear and formed a phalanx in the center of the park.

As is often the case in such events, happenstance intervened. A foreign car backfired on the next block, and as the sound echoed like a rifle shot up Sixty-fifth Street, the opposing mobs came crashing down.

The innocent police officers were soon caught in the middle of a deluge of bricks and bottles. They fired canisters of teargas in each direction, only to have them tossed back by the streetwise combatants. Knives were drawn and chains and lead pipes brandished; but oddly enough, the radicals and reactionaries seemed content to pummel each other from afar, using the police as intermediaries.

The brave lawmen were forced to stand back to back beneath their riot shields to ward off the assorted projectiles hurled by the respective mobs. Their only solace came when an occasional rioter got close enough to their phalanx to be yanked in and subdued with nightsticks.

From their perch in the dogwood tree, Quigly and Elmo saw every blow. The bums and radicals seemed to take the worst of it, as the bald youths possessed a superior arsenal of automotive parts and plumbing fixtures. For their part, the cops seemed to prefer subduing the radicals, who generally reverted to passive resistance when push came to shove.

After a while a police van pulled up and dispatched a gang of vicious German shepherds into the fray. The mob quickly retreated into the streets, overturning some cars and looting several establishments as they went.

As the crowd dispersed, the cops chased and subdued some stragglers, including Quigly and Elmo, who were forced to jump from the tree into a circle of salivating police dogs. Elmo scurried to safety without being bitten, but Quigly was not so lucky. The dogs besieged the old ranger and had torn his uniform to shreds before Elmo was able to beat them off with a stick.

The hermit and the ranger proceeded to hightail it down Witherby as fast as they could go, pausing at an electronics store just long enough for Quigly to appropriate a portable stereo. At the entrance to a nearby alley, a long-haired young man took the pair aside and pointed out an abandoned warehouse where an important meeting was about to take place.

Quigly was exhausted and grieving over the destruction of his uniform, which he had preserved meticulously for decades; so Elmo took him by the waist and led him into the meeting. The warehouse was lit dimly with forty-watt bulbs. Scores of wild-haired young men with boyish beards sat in rows on the floor, and smoke rose from pipes and cigars to mingle with the din of conversation.

Shortly after their arrival, an older gentleman in a business suit rose to address the gathering. It seems that Elmo and Quigly had chanced upon a meeting of the Underground Radicals, whose leaders were imploring the rank and file to recruit more dues-paying members.

Quigly fell asleep almost immediately as the speaker launched into a tirade against the sins of the ruling class. Elmo, on the other hand, was deeply impressed with the professed creed of the Underground, whose battle cry of "You Are Somebody!" was an inspiration to downtrodden folks the world over. (Every chic parlor in certain parts of town had a U.R.! placard on the wall, and half the graffiti in the Big City heralded their message of empowerment.)

True to form, the meeting was ended with a rousing cheer of "U.R.! U.R.! YOU ARE SOMEBODY!!!!" This woke Quigly from his napping, at which point he commenced to wailing about his tattered uniform again.

The gentleman in the business suit who had opened the meeting was moved to pity by the tears of the grizzled old ranger, and he graciously offered to take Quigly and Elmo home for the evening. As the radicals disbanded a limousine pulled around to the side of the old warehouse, where a valet waited to open the door for the duo and their new gentleman friend.

What the hermit failed to realize was that in reality this gentleman was a counteragent aligned with the Occidental League, the bitterest rivals of the Underground Radicals. As he rode downtown Elmo pondered the things that had been said at the meeting, oblivious to the fact that he was about to be recruited into a covert operation of the League, a group of wealthy businessmen whose purpose was to protect the nation's economy from the ravages of the lunatic fringe.

"You are!" said the gentleman as he raised a snifter of brandy provided by the limousine's wet bar.

"You are!" said Elmo as he raised his grapefruit juice cocktail.

"You are!" said Quigly between gulps of malt liquor.

The limo whipped into an underground garage beneath a swank apartment building whose penthouse the counteragent occupied during the milder months. Moments later, Elmo and Quigly were smoking cigars on a veranda overlooking the magnificently illuminated skyline of the Big City.

The fortunes of our friends, it seems, had taken quite a turn for the better.

"Who'd o' thunk it?" belched Quigly. "Who'd o' thunk it?"

Our gentleman friend, a motion picture actor by trade, slipped some Bach into the CD player to drown out the horns and sirens that filtered up between the blocks of buildings below. When he returned to the veranda he carried a tray of fresh fruit and finger sandwiches, which Quigly volunteered to hold in his lap. A moment later a domestic brought another tray loaded with drinks.

"My good fellows," the gentleman said after awhile. "I wonder if you'd like to meet a friend of mine..."

At that the glass door behind them slid open, and out strutted none other than the Honorable Senator Fenton Wentworth. "Ah, but we have already met," said the senator, offering his hand. "Consular General Quigly. Master Frumpkin."

A chair was quickly pushed beneath the senator as he took his place beside Elmo. The four men sat and gazed at the city for some time, sipping and puffing, before the host broke the silence.

"I suppose your uniform meant quite a lot to you," he said to the ranger. "I've taken the liberty of having it replicated." A tailor emerged onto the veranda as if on cue and handed a brand new green uniform to Quigly.

The old ranger nearly broke down and cried. "It's beautiful," he sighed as he tried it on for size. "I'll be dogged, it fits better than the old one!"

A moment later the tailor returned with a leather vest, a pair of buckskin pants, some alligator boots, and a coonskin cap, which he handed to Elmo. "Go ahead, try them on," said the gentleman.

Elmo slipped into the clothes, which along with his scraggly beard and shaggy hair gave the impression of a mountain man from the wild west. He rather liked the feel of the all-natural ensemble, and for a moment he caught himself staring at his reflection in the sliding glass doors.

"Thank you," he said bowing his head. "I would like to repay you. Perhaps you need some dishes cleansed?"

"No, no," insisted the kind host. "There is, however, a little favor you could do me. A job, really--but not too hard, not at all."

At this Quigly's ears perked up. "Me too?" he asked. "Me and Elmo go way back. Why, we're practically family."

"But of course," interjected Senator Wentworth. "I can vouch for this man. A civil servant of the highest caliber. A true patriot."

"Very well then," continued the gentleman. "About the meeting you attended this evening..."

A few hours later, Elmo and Quigly were preparing to reestablish the squatter's camp in Memorial Park. Senator Wentworth and his gentleman friend had generously provided enough military surplus gear to outfit half the urban outdoorsmen in the Big City.

Shortly before sunrise, two black vans pulled into Memorial Park. A crack team of O.L. operatives disguised as vagrants set up the entire camp in less than an hour, while professional agitators proceeded to recruit several dozen bum to fill the tents and the screened-in mess hall.

By the time the police arrived, the camp was surrounded by angry drunks holding U.R.! protest placards. A small stage with a speaker system had been set up near the Main Gate and draped with red and yellow bunting.

At the appropriate time, Elmo and Quigly were rushed onto the stage and introduced to the crowd, which now included a number of radicals and ne'er-do-wells, as well as various representatives of the liberal press. A bearded young man in combat fatigues gave a rousing speech about the duties of mankind, at the end of which he introduced Elmo as a "true revolutionary and friend of the people."

Elmo had no idea why he was on the stage, much less just what he was supposed to say. He stood in awkward silence for some time. The crowd grew hushed in anticipation. Just then a circle of police officers came busting through the crowd. In their midst walked the Honorable Senator Wentworth. They crashed onto the stage and set the senator before the microphone.

"My fellow citizens," the former senator began, "I feel that it is my duty to inform you that the man who was about to speak to you is a fraud. Yes, a fraud." Elmo was puzzled by Wentworth's new demeanor, and he noticed the senator had on a brand new Italian suit. Apparently the old lawmaker had risen in stature since the last raid on his "little compound."

"The truth is that this man, this Elmo Frumpkin, is a fugitive from the law and a tax evader," continued the senator. "He and his Underground Radicals are a fraud, a scam, a ripoff, a fleece. He and this...this 'Ranger' stole everything you see here! And from whom did they steal? From you, the taxpayer! It's all military surplus, every bit of it! Just take a look!"

The senator proceeded to generously offer his help and the help of the Occidental League in repaying the public till, which appeared to be the only way to prevent the camp from being dismantled again. To close his speech Senator Wentworth looked straight into the camera lenses and, fighting back the tears, revealed that until recently he himself had been a resident of the squatter's encampment.

"Yes, fellow citizens," he sniveled, "even I, your humble servant for eighteen years, had fallen to such a sorry state. That is, before I was saved by the O.L., bless their souls." The senator bowed and shook his head, as if he were pondering his downfall and the generosity which had rescued him. Then he turned and pointed a finger at Elmo and Quigly. "Now let me help these two wayward men, these two victims of the Underground Radicals' preposterous ideology!" he cried. "Please, don't arrest them...I can save them, I know I can..."

The police were not swayed by Wentworth's plea, however, and they descended on the hermit and the ranger like a pack of dogs. Quigly was quickly and brutally subdued.

Elmo leapt from the stage and tore like a hunted fox through the crowd. The police gave chase, along with a few special agents from the Occidental League. Luckily for the hermit, the crowd had begun to grow hostile at the appearance of the police, so when the cops jumped into action, the crowd protected our hero and hurried him along.

The harried hermit sprinted down Sixty-fifth Street, dodging cars and busses with reckless abandon. He knew that eventually he would come to the Sixty-fifth Street Bridge.

The entire police force of the Big City seemed to be converging on him at every turn, but no one could seem to catch the cagey woodsman, nor to corner him. When the opportunity presented itself, he grabbed a passing gasoline truck and climbed onto its broad silver back, where he hung on for dear life.

A line of police cars and motorcycles soon formed behind the speeding truck, whose driver was preoccupied with the fact that he was late for a delivery. As the truck neared the bridge over the Passahoochee, it finally lurched to a stop in front of a hastily assembled roadblock. Behind the roadblock, the bridge was being raised foot by foot.

Elmo was just about to be surrounded when an old Harley Davidson roared onto the scene and screeched to a halt right beside the truck.

"Hannibal!" cried Elmo as he jumped off the truck and onto the bike. Hannibal revved the Harley and took off like a shot through the roadblock and onto the drawbridge. Accelerating wildly, the motorcycle sped to the peak of the slowly rising span, where it veered sharply to the right and careened off the edge, falling amid a hail of bullets into the cold waters below.

The cops just scratched their heads and shrugged their shoulders. "Better git a divin' team up hyuh," sighed a sergeant. "River's too deep to drag."

"Oh, well," sighed the gentleman stranger, who had just appeared on the scene. "O.L."

Hannibal was barely able to drag Elmo through the swift current to the dock of the abandoned warehouse where, you will remember, the two fugitives last left their crude log raft. The dazed transvestite hauled his little friend onto the leeward deck and into the lean-to; and then with his last ounce of strength he unmoored the raft and crawled into the lean-to himself, where he promptly passed out.

Half a mile downstream, the raft was passed by a motorboat containing the police diving squad. Fortunately for Hannibal and Elmo, the police officers mistook the craft for the usual flotsam and jetsam that float downriver from the Big City, the old cars and refrigerators and segments of buildings and bridges.

Elmo stirred at the sound of the motorboat whining its way upstream. Leaning on his elbow, he tried to awaken Hannibal, but the brave Negro was out cold. The hermit stripped his friend's wet clothes and covered him with what remained of their hijacked wardrobes. As he tried to rub some warmth back into Hannibal's limbs, Elmo noticed blood seeping through the floor of the raft.

"Oh my," he said, "you've been injured." Further examination revealed that Hannibal had a small round hole under his right armpit; but there was nothing to be done, at least not until the next morning, when they would be back out in the countryside, where Elmo could scrounge up some herbs.

Overnight, Hannibal became feverish. Elmo was worried; he didn't know what had made the hole, nor how to treat it. A cold rain began to fall at daybreak. Elmo went out and found the herbs he needed, preparing them in a compress that smelled to high heaven.

When Hannibal woke up later that evening, he nearly gagged on the stench. A hearty meal of warm stew renewed the injured man's spirit, and by the next morning he was able to crawl out onto the port bow to do some fishing. There was a lump beside one of his short ribs, but the wound had already closed and didn't appear to harbor any infection.

The following days were spent floating lazily down the Passahoochee soaking up the sun of a short-lived Indian summer. Hannibal healed remarkably, though the bullet lodged in his chest occasionally gave him pains and fevers that required Elmo to keep a good supply of willow bark on hand.

The landscape around the river changed gradually as the pair floated ever southward. Just as the foothills had given way to the coastal plain, so now the plain gave way to the bogs and swamps of the lowlands. Spanish moss filled the oak trees that overarched the river, and the water turned to black. The air grew progressively warmer, and fogs and mists roamed about like the handkerchiefs of ghosts.

One day in late November the raft came upon a horrible scene. A small white dog was thrashing around frantically in a shallow backwater up the east bank, valiantly attempting to free itself from the jaws of a sleepy alligator. The gator had the little pup by the right rear leg and was about to pull her under.

The pup began to yelp shrilly when she saw Hannibal and Elmo, who could do nothing but watch. As their raft came even with the backwater, the little dog lunged away from her attacker and began to doggie-paddle towards the middle of the river, yelping all the while.

A splash and a ripple indicated where the angry gator had dived in hot pursuit. The huge reptile's wake followed the pup relentlessly, gaining another yard with every pitiful stroke of the canine's three remaining legs.

Hannibal covered his eyes. Then he heard a splash beside the raft that nearly scared him to death. It was Elmo, diving in to save the helpless puppy!

The hermit barreled through the water like a torpedo. When he came upon the little white dog he dove at a shallow angle that brought him just beneath the slimy white belly of the gator, whose jaws gaped open as it overtook its quarry. Elmo disappeared into a frothing maelstrom of water and limbs as Hannibal scooped the pup out of the river just in the nick of time.

The maelstrom died down quickly. Nothing appeared above the black surface of the water for several moments; and then out popped the hairy head of the hermit, still firmly attached, to Hannibal's relief, to the rest of his wiry body. The gator surfaced a moment later near the backwater, none the worse for wear.

"How did you DO dat?" gasped the Negro as he cuddled the shivering little three-legged dog. "I ain't never seen nuthin' LIKE it!"

"Simple," replied the hermit. "I merely held the beast's jaws shut until he gave up. Alligators have great strength to close their jaws, as our little friend here would certainly tell you. But they have no strength to get them back open again." Elmo said this as if he were reciting the recipe for apple pie, which astounded Hannibal nearly as much as the feat itself.

Elmo proceeded to treat the pup's wound with herbs left over from his previous patient. The little dog responded warmly to all the attention heaped on her by our heroes, who named their new charge "Lefty" in honor of the recently acquired maldistribution of her limbs.

Lefty, a squash-nosed curly-tailed Chinese pug, proved to be a delightful traveling partner. She never asked for pity over her disability, nor was she an overly aggressive beggar, carrying herself with a deportment fitting an ancestor of the royal palace pugs of the emperors of China.

As the southern winter deepened, the raft entered the mazelike web of marshes and tributaries known as Bloodisome Swamp, so named when a battle between Colonial soldiers and an army of renegade Indians and runaway slaves had stained the waters red two centuries before. Here the river slowed to a barely perceptible crawl as it meandered among the bubbling springs and trembling hummocks of the bloody bog.

Legend had it that the offspring of the slaves and Indians who survived the battle still lived in the depths of the swamp, totally isolated from the outside world for two hundred years. Stories were told of hunters and fishermen who went into the swamp never to return, and many a nearby resident swore of hearing eerie chants at night.

Elmo laughed at Hannibal's recollections of his grandma's stories about Bloodisome Swamp. But when the fugitives began to hear those eerie songs of the night themselves, and when Lefty became so fidgety that she had to be held almost constantly, a paddle was rigged on the rear of the raft to hasten their journey along.

It wasn't long before they realized that they had lost the main current of the Passahoochee and were now floating aimlessly with the fey tides of the lowlands. Only the sun enabled them to stay on a southerly course. Even so, they often found themselves stuck in dead-end backwaters, where the heavy mists and clinging murk of the very swamp seemed to conspire against their escape.

One evening after uncounted weeks of wandering the bog Lefty perked up her ears and slinked into the lean-to with her tail between her legs, or more precisely, her leg and her stump. Shortly thereafter Hannibal swore that he heard voices. As the moon rose yellow over the swamp, the rhythm of drums became unmistakable.

"Let's find out what...who it is," said Elmo.

Hannibal turned as pale as possible and swallowed hard. "Alright," he whispered. "But only 'cause we lost."

Elmo manned the paddle at the rear of the raft as Hannibal squatted listening intently from the starboard bow. The raft seemed to drift towards the sound of the drums of its own accord, as if it were being drawn into a current meant for that very purpose. In the distance, a fire could be seen writhing into the sky behind a line of moss-filled oaks.

As the raft drew closer to the steady beat of the drums, Hannibal began to rock back and forth and to hum a deep, tremulous melody. Elmo let go of the paddle and cuddled Lefty in his lap to keep her quiet.

The current washed our heroes out into a shallow pond adjacent to the line of oaks. Here the raft began to turn slowly clockwise, so Elmo took a pole from the lean-to and steadied her course. The groping roots of the ancient trees, looking like hundreds of pale gray snakes in the smoky dusk, began to scratch at the bottom and sides of the raft.

An eddy pulled the raft slowly beneath the canopy, drawing it silently between two of the oldest oaks. As it began to emerge from the trailing shadows of the trees, Elmo slid his pole into the muck and held steady.

Gazing through the gauzy film of branches and Spanish moss, Hannibal and Elmo could just make out the silhouettes of a ring of dancers surrounding the fire. Two rows of African drummers sat to one side pounding on hollow wooden cylinders stretched over with skins, while a circle of redskins danced around the fire. Each drummer seemed lost in a rhythm of his own, and the dancers lurched and flailed about as if in another world; but the whole circle moved, and the drums resonated, as one.

"I don' believes it," an emboldened Hannibal murmered. "C'mon, le's get closer."

Elmo let loose from the murky bottom. The raft pulled slowly back into the current. As they drifted towards the fire, the hermit thought he saw a flat-bottomed boat disappear around the bend up ahead.

All of a sudden the chanting and dancing and drumming stopped, only to be replaced by a chorus of sighs and laughter. "Okay, take five!" shouted one of the runaway slaves as he set his drum against a tree.

"Hey, look at that!" said a renegade Indian who had just spotted the crude log raft and its unlikely inhabitants as they slipped past at the edge of the firelight. "Looks like Davey Crockett might get lucky tonight!" The assorted cast of slaves and Indians doubled over with laughter.

Elmo, you will recall, still wore the mountain man's garb given to him by our gentleman friend from the Occidental League, while Hannibal was looking better than ever after his stint in the hospitality business, during which time he had picked up a bottle of hair relaxer and some top-of-the-line makeup. The drummers and dancers assumed that Elmo was a fellow actor from the Wild West exhibit, and that Hannibal was his escort.

It was, after all, a Friday night, and that meant payday at Jerry's All-American Family Funland. The raft continued to drift down a narrowing channel farther and farther from the laughter at the Battle of Bloodisome Swamp Exhibit.

Hannibal and Elmo were trying to figure out what in the world had just happened when a huge, oddly rigid alligator lunged at them from the bank with a strange, tinny roar that set Lefty to trembling uncontrollably. Motionless snakes dangled from the trees, and the strains of a haunting symphony began to ease into earshot.

"Mebbe dis place really IS haunted," Hannibal wondered aloud.

The current had picked up considerably as the channel narrowed, so that Elmo had to take up the paddle to steer. Soon the corners of the raft began to clip the channel banks, causing it to spin first clockwise, then counterclockwise, then clockwise again. Horrible screams rose and fell from the darkness, and deathlike moans alternated with hysterical laughter.

"Gooooooo baaaaaack," moaned a particularly frightening voice. "Go baaaaaaaaaaaack!"

"Here, gimme dat," said Hannibal, taking the paddle from Elmo, "We's gittin outta here." With the paddle in one hand and the pole in the other, the muscular Negro began to fight his way through the vines and roots that blocked the west bank of the channel, at times dragging the whole raft over logs and breaking great branches off the oak and Cyprus trees. Elmo had little choice but to join in.

After nearly an hour of this the sweaty duo finally wrenched the raft from between two Cyprus stumps and onto the open water. The broad, shallow southern reaches of the Passahoochee spread out before them, full of bubbling springs and dense schools of fish.

Relieved and exhausted, Hannibal crawled into the lean-to and passed out. Lefty slipped in behind him and snuggled up in the crotch of his knee.

Elmo stretched out near the edge of the raft, propping his cheek against the back of his hand. As the sound of wavelets slapping against the side of the raft lulled him off to sleep, the hermit passed into a dream about his home.

Before sunrise Hannibal and Elmo were rudely awakened by the sound of a motorboat bearing down on them at high speed. At the last second the nose of the craft veered to the right, sending a cold splash into the lean-to and washing Elmo clear off the side of the raft.

By the time Hannibal was able to crawl out of the lean-to, the wake of the motorboat had pitched the raft roughly about and turned it in a circle. All that remained of Elmo was his coonskin cap laying on the edge of the bow.

"Mo! Mo!" cried Hannibal as he staggered across the craft looking in the water for some sign of his little friend. "Where you be? MO!!"

A jet of bubbles rose to the surface a few yards away. Hannibal dove in and swam with powerful strokes to the bottom, where he groped around until his air ran out. Rising to the surface he filled his lungs, and realizing that the bubbles around him were coming not from Elmo but from the springs, he began to swim frantically around the raft in widening circles.

The motorboat pulled up beside the raft, where Lefty was making quite a commotion as she leaned precipitously off the edge looking at a spot on the water. The hysterical pug leapt into the water and commenced to yelping as she paddled in a tight circle around the spot that had excited her so.

Hannibal stroked over to the spot and dove to the bottom, where he came upon the lifeless form of the hermit. Struggling to the surface with his burden, the exhausted transvestite grabbed for the raft, but he was too drained to haul Elmo onto the deck.

The occupants of the motorboat, two brothers out collecting alligator skins, jumped into the dark river and helped flop the limp hermit to safety. While the older of the brothers heaved Hannibal onto the raft, the younger went and saved Lefty, who had drifted some distance downriver during Elmo's rescue.

Once all five were back safely on their respective crafts the older brother, whose name was Delbert, popped the younger, Jasper, square in the chops.

"You dadblame mo-ron!" Delbert hollered. "Looky what you done."

"Aw, Del, I didn't mean no harm," whined Jasper. "I was just a-tryin' ta have some fuuun."

"You coulda kilt that boy," Delbert roared. "Why, I oughtta tan yer worthless hide."

"Just you try," snapped Jasper. "I double dog dare ye."

The brothers Finch proceeded to put up their dukes and to bob and weave in an exaggerated mock fistfight.

"I'll whup you like a ugly stepchile," warned Delbert.

"You ain't seen the day in twenny year," sneered Jasper.

"I'll be whuppin' you 'til the en'," said Delbert.

"I coulda whupped you afore I 'as borned," retorted Jasper.

In the meantime Hannibal had pumped a gallon or two of riverwater from Elmo's lungs, and the hermit was coming to.

"Wh...Wha happ...What happened?" Elmo gasped between retches.

"Hush now," said Hannibal. "You jus' fine."

Lefty shook her coat dry and snuggled up in Elmo's lap. "She save yo' life," sniveled Hannibal.

"Well then," said Elmo. "I suppose we're even." He clutched the pug to his chest and sighed.

"Hey, buddy!" shouted Delbert, though he was only ten feet away. "Lemme make it up to ye." The grimy riverman uncorked a jug and took a generous swig, then he tossed the jug to Hannibal. "Yawl keep this here fer yerselfs. Best apple squeezin's in th' county. Do yer little frien' some gooood."

Hannibal sniffed the sweet concoction, which brought tears to his eyes. He took a swig, and another, and a third; then he poured a healthy dose into Elmo, who laid back immediately and began to mumble.

"Thanks," belched the grateful Negro.

"Ma pleasure," answered Delbert, tipping his hat as Jasper revved up the engine and sped away.

After polishing off the jug, our heroes proceeded to pass into oblivion on the deck of the raft. They floated downriver unseen until late in the afternoon, when they drifted up a backwater and into a water hazard on the tenth hole of the Dixie Mews Country Club golf course.

A passing foursome noticed the pair and tossed some golf balls at them to wake them up.

"Hey, you!" shouted one of the golfers. "Get the devil out of here before I call security."

"Now, now," scolded a second golfer. "No need to get security. You, caddy! Go awaken those men." The golfer's caddy scrambled down the bank and onto the raft.

"Mebbe dey dead," reported the caddy as he leaned gingerly over the pair. "Naw, dey jus' out colt. I sees 'em breathin'."

"Perhaps they're hungry," volunteered the son of the second golfer.

"I believe I'm going to go feed these poor souls," the lad's father said thoughtfully as he mentally doubled the fifty-seven strokes he had shot on the front nine. "You gentlemen go on without me."

The kind golfer's caddy led Hannibal and Elmo up the bank and over to an electric golf cart. The golfer, the caddy and the stoned fugitives drove on to the clubhouse, where the appearance of Mr. Purdy caused quite a stir.

After dismissing the caddy and ordering three prime rib dinners, the golfer began to question his guests, hoping to discover how they had come to such a dismal pass. But the interrogation was cut short when a group of members came up behind Hannibal and began telling some inappropriate jokes.

"Why don't you buzz off, Randolph?" snapped the golfer.

"You know the rules," Randolph replied.

Not wanting to cause a scene, Hannibal stood up to leave. The offended club members mistook his intentions and jumped back.

"Call 'im off" whimpered Randolph. "I've got a nine iron, and I'm not afraid to use it! You there, call security, pronto."

Before Hannibal could even sit back down a security guard showed up outside the clubhouse. Randolph took the opportunity to wrap the nine iron around Hannibal's skull, knocking him senseless. The security guard dashed to the scene and threw Hannibal to the floor, driving his knee into the bloodied fugitive's back and pinning his arms behind him.

Hannibal and Elmo were taken to the cavernous basement of the gorgeous antebellum mansion that served as the centerpiece of the country club, where they were to await the arrival of the local constabulary. A few minutes later Hannibal came to.

"Where we at?" he asked groggily.

"This is the root cellar of the historical Fremont estate," answered a voice from the stairs above. "And I'm Uncle Benjamin, at your service." A regal old Negro in a period butler's uniform marched into the cellar and offered Hannibal a glass of water. "Here, I've put some aspirin in it for you."

"Thank you, sah," said Hannibal as he emptied the glass.

"The sheriff will be here soon," continued the butler. "I would advise you to cooperate with him completely."

"We can't talk to no sher'f!" cried Hannibal. "We gots ta git outta dis place!"

"So, you are in trouble already." The butler stroked his white goatee and thought for a moment. "Come, follow me," he said.

The old man led the prisoners deeper into the cavernous cellar, which was filled with ancient wine racks and crates of antiques. Behind the northern wall of the root cellar they came upon a secret passageway that ran to a small room hewn clean out of the limestone native to that region. The room led in turn to a tunnel that slithered beneath the golf course and back out to the riverbank, where it ended at a trap door hidden in a thick bramble.

"Now get on your way as fast as you can," whispered the butler. "And Godspeed to you."

Finding their raft just over the hill, Hannibal and Elmo made good their escape. They spent that night putting as much distance as they could between their little log raft and the country club.

From there on out, they decided to run only at night, tying the raft up beneath the tangle of the riverbank as they slept away the days. Little did they know that they were rapidly approaching the delta of the Passahoochee, where the Coast Guard kept a constant vigil in an effort to intercept refugees and smugglers coming in from the south.

"Han' me anutha earfworm, Mo," said Hannibal as he swung his bone fishing hook onto the deck of the raft. "De worms is jumpin' mo den de fish is today."

Elmo dragged a reluctant worm from the mayonnaise jar and handed it to his companion, who in attempting to impale the little creature dropped it into the river through a crack in the raft.

"Han' me anutha earfworm, Mo."

"You there! Just one minute!" cried a frail, whiny voice from the bank nearby, where a thin brunette was stepping out from behind a bulrush. "Don't you know what you're doing?"

"We're fishing," said Elmo.

"And what are you using for bait?" demanded the girl. Not waiting for an answer, she stepped off the bank and walked, so slender and wispy was her build, right across the lilypads and onto the deck of the raft. "Now I'm not one to lecture," she continued, "but did you know that in an average lifetime one hundred earthworms can aerate as much soil as a three horsepower tiller?"

"No," said Elmo.

"And did you know," she added, "that a discarded plastic earthworm can last in the environment for seventy generations?"

"No," said Elmo.

"And couldn't you consider," she concluded, "that an earthworm has every bit as much right to exist on this planet as any one of us?"

"I have considered that," Elmo responded after a pause. "Unfortunately, at present we have only this method of survival available."

The girl put her hand on her hip and said, "Sarcasm, sir, is uncalled for. This is the PLANET we're talking about."

"He ain't foolin'," Hannibal interjected. "We's hungry, ma'am. We's gotta live on sumpin'."

"Oh," said the girl. "I hadn't thought of that. Oh, my name's Suzy. Suzy Dayglow." She offered her hand to Elmo, then to Hannibal. "I live just over the rise. You wanna come eat with us?"

"Sho'," said Hannibal. "I hasn't had a decent meal since...in a long time, honey."

Elmo poled to shore. The pair followed Ms. Dayglow up the bank and down a footpath that led past a series of rich delta gardens to the dinnerhouse of the Harmony Springs Commune. Suzy rang a bell, and a dozen or so of her comrades sauntered into the house.

"Friends," Suzy began, "I'd like you to meet Hanni...uh, Hannah Purdy, and Elmo Frumpkin. I found them on the river."

"Wow," said a hairy man in a very colorful T-shirt. "Like, where you folks from? Like, not around here, that's fer sure."

"We's from...uh, the Big City," Hannibal answered. "We's jus' out fishin'. On a fishin' trip."

A tiny blackhaired lad walked up to the transvestite and said, "Then how come you're dressed like a..."

"Sundance!" snapped the little boy's aunt. "Uh, ask the lady if she wants to see your new dance. Go on..."

Just then Lefty hobbled into the dinnerhouse, still shaking the riverwater out of her hair. Sundance ran over to the pup and squeezed her half to death. "Can I go play with 'im," pleaded the lad. "Pleeeease, can I can I can I huh?"

"Sure, go 'head," said half a dozen voices. The boy ran outside happily, with Lefty gasping for air in his arms.

"Now then," piped Suzy. "Who wants to make some tollhouse cookies?"

Everybody answered in the affirmative, including a few stragglers and eavesdroppers who had come to see what all the fuss was about. Soon half the citizens of Harmony Springs were busy churning butter and crushing sugar cane and mixing batter. In the meantime the oven was stoked, and some flat cooking rocks were scrubbed clean with sand, and a lass was sent down to the convenience store to buy some chocolate chips.

As the women went about baking the cookies, Hannibal and Elmo sat down with the menfolk to drink some beer. Our heroes soon learned all they wanted to know about the commune, which was entirely self-sufficient, owing mainly to a trust fund left to Suzy by her toilet paper magnate father.

After polishing off most of the cookies, everyone gathered around to share a blueberry kush blunt as a fellow named Weevil D. Grafitti began to strum a guitar. The communers circled around and joined in:

"How many roads must a man walk upon
Before they name one after him?"
Yes and must I die in a damn plane crash
Before they will love me like Jim?
And why should they care if I find my true Lord
And write me a couple o' hymns?
The answer, my friend, is just around the bend.
The answer is just around the bend. "

Suzy sighed. Someone scoffed about the song being "like, SO retro," but no one paid much attention. Elmo noticed that everybody seemed lost in thought, though no one seemed particularly inclined to philosophize. Hannibal said something about getting behind schedule, then he motioned to the hermit that it was time to go.

"It was nice meeting you," said Elmo.

"Do you have to go?" whined Suzy. "So soon?"

"I's afraid so, missy," Hannibal cooed. "But you's sho been sweet."

"Won't you take some cookies?" Suzy asked.

"Thank ya, ma'am," said Hannibal. "But we really gots ta be goin'."

Elmo whistled for Lefty, and when the pup showed up a moment later licking chocolate chips from her chops, they returned to the raft and headed on downstream. The citizens of Harmony Springs ran down to their little beach on the river to say farewell, diving and somersaulting naked into the water and frolicking like children.

"Goodbye, Hannah!" hollered Sundance.

"Goodbye, Elmo!" laughed Suzy. "Ya'll come back and see us sometime!"

Hannibal and Elmo waved goodbye as Lefty barked and yelped and wagged her tail so hard she fell down. A sign at the edge of the little beach read, "Absolutely NO Skinny Dipping (During Snapping Turtle Season)," which tickled Hannibal to no end.

"Wish we coulda stayed," the weary Negro sighed between chuckles. "I reckon we'd o' jus' brung trouble, tho'. Jus' trouble."

As they floated through the braided delta of the Passahoochee, the fugitives began to notice the salty smell of the sea. Ocean birds twitted overhead, and a pair of dolphins appeared alongside the raft, surfacing and diving in a game of aquatic tag as the receding banks of the river soon gave way to a broad stretch of aquablue ocean. Tiny islands hung to the seabed in defiance of the current that swept the brackish water of the Passahoochee eastward. The raft picked up speed as it left the river water behind, running nearly parallel to the shore, which grew more and more distant as evening approached.

By late afternoon, the sea had turned a brilliant blue that varied with the depth of the water and with the coral and vegetation on the shallow bottom. The setting sun painted the smooth surface with splashes of pastel colors that mirrored the purply green cloudbanks in the west.

"You spose we's lost?" asked Hannibal. "Ain't no lan' nowhere. Mebbe we done come too far."

Elmo didn't answer.

After three days at sea, Hannibal and Elmo were growing desperate. Their water had run out the first day, and they were both having spells of delusion caused by the tropical heat.

As evening approached, Hannibal began to hallucinate. "Lawd, Lawd, it's a whale!" he moaned. "Don' let 'im swaller me, Mo. Please don' let 'im swaller me!" The hermit led his friend into the lean-to, where they both drifted off to sleep.

Late that night a loud siren awoke them rudely. Bright red and white lights penetrated the rickety lean-to. Someone was hailing them over a loudspeaker.

"Show yourselves immediately. This is the Coast Guard. We are preparing to board your craft. Do not resist. I repeat, do not resist."

Elmo crawled out onto the deck, covering his eyes in the glaring light. Hannibal followed dressed in his boxer shorts and motorcycle leathers.

"Well would you look at that," joked a sailor on the deck of the cutter upon seeing Elmo's mountain-man garb. "Damned if it ain't Huck and Jim come outta retirement." The guardsmen assumed our heroes to be illegal immigrants and processed them accordingly.

A few hours later our heroes joined a group of refugees being helicoptered towards the south, leaving a frantic Lefty behind in the care of the seamen. Elmo couldn't believe his eyes as the huge green chopper cut through the heavy air just below the clouds. Beneath them the sea hovered like an azure mirage, while above, the clouds cast flickering columns of sunlight into the surrounding haze. Occasionally they passed over lush green islands ringed with white sand, and once they saw a small fishing boat.

By noon the chopper was landing at an airstrip on a long, narrow peninsula that jutted out from a peculiarly barren island. Here most of the refugees were herded through a processing center and released onto a dirt road that led into the hills beyond.

After being separated from the others and strip searched, the two friends were released, thanks mostly to a quickly improvised deaf-mute routine in which Elmo played the part of Hannibal's halfwit albino stepbrother. Elmo soon found that he couldn't understand a word of the islanders' language; fortunately, Hannibal was able to pick it up rather quickly.

The odd appearance of the duo caused a mild sensation in the first little village they happened upon as they trod down a random dusty road. They were lucky enough to scrounge up some food, and a group of friendly children quickly surrounded them, asking to be told stories. Hannibal obliged them by endlessly describing the plots of television cartoons he'd seen during his years of captivity, much to the delight of the little ones.

That night the pair slept on the beach. In time they learned to feed themselves on the fruit, fish and seaweed native to the island. The locals often brought them stews and banana bread, and the children came by nearly every evening to hear more stories.

For a number of months Hannibal and Elmo lived contentedly on the little island, impoverished though it was. Powerful storms occasionally forced them to flee to the limestone caves in the isle's mountainous interior, where they befriended several dreadlocked shaman who lived there hermitlike on herbs and lambsbreath. Once or twice they were rousted by police thugs and jailed for questioning, but all in all, their lives had become rather idyllic.

One morning after a night of particularly violent thunderstorms they emerged from their favorite cave and, hearing what they took to be more thunder, crested a high ridge that afforded a view of the distant capitol city of their adopted isle. The sprawling little harbor town lay in the shadow of the mountain, so that only the tall white steeples of churches were lit by the rising sun. A cock crowed, and somewhere below a baby was crying.

In a flash the serenity of the cool morning was shattered as a jet came screeching overhead at low altitude. It passed with a thunderous roar over the capitol and dropped its ordnance, leaving behind a series of explosions that formed a line of dust and fire in the streets below. Just as suddenly another jet strafed the city, and another; and then the steady thump! thump! thump! of dozens of helicopters eased into earshot. They were coming from the sea.

Hannibal and Elmo stood dumbfounded. They had no way of knowing that their lives were about to be turned upside-down by a decision made over a thousand miles away in the halls of the Pentagon (a building numerologists tell us is prone to gravitate towards ground zero every four years.)

It seems that the tiny island's Tourist Board had been taken over by radicals whose first step upon assuming power was to nationalize the sunbathing oil industry. In the interest of keeping the hemisphere open for democracy and free trade, the Marines had been called in, striking at dawn in order to surprise the sleepy populace.

The hour-long invasion proved a smashing success. Air supremacy was established immediately, clearing the way for an amphibious landing and the deployment of two crack helicopter divisions. The radicals were instantly apprehended and extradited, with the exception of their leader, who escaped for several hours into a local convent.

By nightfall the entire island had been secured. Several Marines out on a patrol decided to celebrate the liberation of the island by shooting bullets wildly into the air. Ironically, it was just such a bullet that happened to strike Hannibal in the shoulder as he and Elmo trudged full of curiosity down the mountain. The hermit was forced to drag his friend all the way to the capitol city, where a small hospital tent had been set up by the generous invaders.

Hannibal's wound was treated and a sling provided to hold his arm in the proper position. As they left the tent, a Marine approached and began a friendly conversation with Elmo. As it turned out, the Marine was a lieutenant from the Public Relations Corps, and he was fascinated by the hermit's family background.

"Would you believe it?" chuckled the colonel. "My mother's maiden name is Frumpkin. Why, we're probably cousins! Come on, let's go have a drink!"

A jeep was dispatched to carry the lieutenant and his new friends back to camp, where no less a personage than General Chargin' Arvin Schmauckbinnder, the commander of the whole operation, was waiting to meet them.

After dinner and a few drinks, Hannibal and Elmo were dismissed and guided to their roomy, well appointed tent, where they both slid into their freshly made cots and drifted off to sleep. Late that night the colonel and the general peeked their heads into the tent to check on their guests.

"Are you goddamned sure these men are bona fide nationals?" whispered the general. "We'd be in one hell of a pickle if we went through all this and couldn't find one gaddamned national to rescue."

"Yes sir," said the colonel. "I'm positive. At least, they will be by morning."

At the crack of dawn Hannibal and Elmo were awakened and taken to the camp barber, who gave them standard civilian haircuts and shaved their ample beards. Then it was on to the camp tailor, who just happened to have a crew on hand to whip up some appropriate clothing.

By lunchtime our heroes were boarding a plane bound for the mainland. Hannibal was dressed in one of those cheap black business suits common among the Negro clergy, while Elmo sported a pair of Bermuda shorts and a golfing shirt. As the craft neared its destination, General Schmauckbinnder came and spoke to the worried fugitives.

"At ease, boys," he barked. "I have a few things to tell ya. About that little invasion..."

The general carefully debriefed them regarding the unfortunate coup which had necessitated the use of military force on the island, assuring the pair that the Marines had arrived just in time to rescue them from bloodthirsty guerrillas. He then proceeded to tell them that he knew all about their checkered past back home, about the arrests and escapes, the assaults and the cohabitation.

"Is you gwine stick us back in jail?" Hannibal asked.

"No, no, son," chuckled Schmauckbinnder. "You boys have a mission now. You're representing everything good and decent about your country. Those Marines back there risked their lives to save you from outside influences and foreign tyranny. All we ask in return is that you stand up like true patriots and tell the people what you saw."

That very afternoon, Hannibal and Elmo found themselves riding on the back seat of a spiffy Cadillac convertible in the middle of a tickertape parade down the main avenue of the nation's proud capitol. Tens of thousands of soldiers marched before and behind them in vast columns that wound wormlike across bridges and around city blocks. Jeeps and tanks of every description rolled past the adoring throng, which cheered every song played by the marching bands and showered the soldiers with roses and candy. Patriotic confetti slithered down from every window, painting the sky with wiggles of red, white, and blue. Jets and helicopters swooped overhead, and VIP's from every branch of government rode by, waving from the backs of convertibles.

The convertible just ahead of Hannibal and Elmo's was occupied, oddly enough, by none other than the honorable Senator Fenton T. Wentworth and the victorious General Arvin Schmauckbinnder. This, dear reader, was no coincidence. For in the warm afterglow of the great military victory down south, Senator Wentworth had announced his candidacy for the nation's presidency; and he was preparing to announce that the general was his runningmate.

After the parade, Hannibal and Elmo were taken to a modest suite at the Imperial Hotel, where a pair of makeup and wardrobe artists readied them for an appearance on the Geronimo Schwartz Show. It was on this immensely popular daytime talk show that Senator Wentworth's handlers had chosen to announce his candidacy, owing in part to the lingering invasion euphoria and in part to the show's lowbrow demographics.

Geronimo was a handsome man of that swarthy type often associated with the Mediterranean, and sometimes with miscegenation. He sported a dashing, confident on-camera persona that sold prodigious amounts of soap and feminine products to his adoring nationwide audience. As the bouncy opening theme cued Geronimo to strut onstage, our heroes were led along with the senator and the general to a little green room nearby.

A few minutes later Senator Wentworth was called onstage. Hannibal and Elmo watched on a small black and white monitor as Geronimo introduced the senator and began to grill him about his domestic relations. A few audience members then asked some pointed questions regarding the kind of tree he's be and his favorite color.

After the first commercial break, Senator Wentworth made a dramatic announcement that filled the studio with rousing applause. Just then an aide came and fetched General Schmauckbinnder, whose appearance brought the audience to its feet. The senator and the general clasped hands and raised their arms high above their heads as volunteers proceeded to toss hundreds of campaign buttons to the crowd.

Unfortunately, the Wentworth/Schmauckbinnder ticket contained too many letters to fit nicely on a button; so the little campaign mementos simply read, Fenton and Arvin--4U! The use of the candidates' first names proved to be a PR bonanza for the fledgling campaign, though a few of their adversaries made light of the inappropriateness of Chargin' Arvin's nickname in those times of fiscal irresponsibility.

With the show winding down, Geronimo spontaneously inquired about the urban plank in Senator Wentworth's platform. The senator called it his Gentle Light Urban Renewal Program, or GLURP. While a few pundits later remarked that the Gentle Light program sounded like a new brand of diet prune juice, the public and the press, as predicted by focus groups, welcomed the innovative ideas of the independent campaign like a breath of fresh air.

As Wentworth outlined his plan to save the nation's cities from internal disintegration, Hannibal and Elmo were paraded out as prototypes of its success.

"My friends," he said sincerely as police photos of our heroes were plastered across the nations television screens, "not four months ago these two men were homeless unemployed jailbirds on the run from the law. They lived in squalor on the mean streets of the city, endangering the lives of honest citizens and devaluing adjacent properties. Today, they are treasured members of our campaign team. Why, just look at 'em--their own mamas wouldn't recognize 'em." Sure enough, both men now sported navy blue blazers with bright red neckties, and their faces veritably shone with health.

"You may ask yourselves," continued the senator, "how we turned these two hopeless bums into two productive members of society. Well, let me tell ya. We gave 'em a chance, that's all. An opportunity. That's what makes this nation so great, friends--opportunity. And that's what GLURP is all about."

Wentworth paused and looked his pet projects up and down, nodding his head with pleasure. Then he turned back to the studio audience, and pointing his finger at the camera, he began a passionate description of what ailed the country and what he was going to do about it. (In later years this impromptu speech would be known simply as the "Four Cornerstones Speech," and its renown would rival even that infamous speech given so many decades before about a little dog belonging to a former vice-president with a rather checkered legacy.)

"We face a disaster in this great nation," Wentworth began as General Schmauckbinnder stepped quietly to his side. "It is not a disaster looming on foreign shores, such as have threatened us in the past. This is no red menace, no yellow peril. Our enemies are right here among us, and they're seeking to ruin us from within.

"These enemies, these destroyers of tradition and unity, are even now plotting to corrupt our long-held values and cherished social relations. You may ask, who are they? Who is out to destroy us, to leave our children and grandchildren sitting on a heap of ashes? Well I'll tell you who, and you'd better listen good.

"First off, and foremost in my mind, are the international bankers livin' up in New York City. These bastards of International Capital are selling out our families and our fatherland to the Japs, the A-rabs, and yes, even the Dutch. Our vast wealth, earned by the sweat and toil of the common man, is being squandered away on ferrin' aid, or lost in the international stock markets and the overseas commodity exchanges. And it's all being done from right here in our own back yard, right in the backrooms and bathroom stalls of that commie-pinko U-nited Nations!!" At this point the senator paused, as if he were too angry to continue. The audience grew perfectly still.

"But there is hope. Yes, there is hope that we may overcome these traitorous bankers, who would sell their own mothers to the devil if the price was right. How, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you how. We have to close off the flow of capital. Nip it in the bud. Just like my close personal friend Chargin' Arvin Schmauckbinnder nipped those lazy pinkos down south!!" The audience rose to its feet and cheered loudly for several minutes, until General Schmauckbinnder finally quieted them.

"Yes, there is hope," Wentworth continued. "It lies in our proud stock of domestic capital, which is presided over so brilliantly by our fine Jewish bankers. My friends, we must empower our domestic Jewish bankers to reclaim what has been stolen. We must offer them every legislative advantage, and we must back them with our great army if necessary. Long live our Jewish bankers! Long live domestic capital! This must be our cry!" Again the crowd went wild, for every citizen had great faith that peculiar talent of the chosen ones, and every family had felt in some way the economic pain caused by those parasites of capitalism overseas.

"I call this my Domestic Capital policy, and it is the first cornerstone of my platform. There are three more cornerstones, and each and every one of them is just as important as the Domestic Capital policy." The senator paced for a few moments as if to gather his thoughts, then he held up his fingers and faced the camera.

"There is a second great threat to our national security," he crowed, "and it comes from the unrest among our ethnic minorities, who are ungrateful for all the things this great country has to offer them. There is a third threat, my friends, and that third threat comes from the radical feminists, who are out to destroy the very foundation of our society, the nuclear family. And the fourth threat--yes, there is another--the fourth great threat comes from the great unwashed environmentalists, who selfishly desire to destroy our precious economy for their own perverted ends."

The crowd grew hushed, sensing that the senator may have made a fateful mistake. Such views may have been popular at the time, but it was most incorrect to voice them, especially if one wished to walk the tightrope of a presidential campaign. But Fenton Wentworth was no fool. His advisors had researched the mood of the country extensively, developing as a result the Four Cornerstones strategy the senator was about to unveil.

"My friends," he said in his most sincere and lilting voice, "there are good people and bad people in this world. You can't tell 'em by the color of their skin, or by their sex, or by how long they grow their hair. So how do you tell the good ones from the bad? Well let me tell ya. "

Now the senator's voice grew strong and presidential, and he began to wave his fist about. "You can tell the good from the bad by peeling back the skin and looking at what's inside. And if you ask me, these hoods and radicals, these feminists and tree huggers--well, they may be all black and brown and pink and green on the outside. But deep down, they're all goddamned Reds!"

By now Geronimo's producers were frantically signaling to go to a commercial break, and some audience members feared a fight might break out. (Fortunately, the studio chairs had all been bolted down years ago.) The senator acknowledged the producers and began to wrap up his first and most important stump speech.

"Now I don't mean to cause any trouble," he lectured. "But it's about time this nation stood up for its roots, its heritage. It's about time we stopped all the infighting and settled this once and for all. I say we need to start with the Four Cornerstones."

Now the Senator strode right out into the audience, and looked deep into the eye of the camera. "First," he boomed, "we need to empower our Jewish bankers. Second, we need to reward cooperative ethnics like this fine gentleman behind me, who stands as a testament to the promise of the Gentle Light Urban Renewal Program. Third, we need to encourage the redomestication of our working women, so that our children may once again reap the benefits of the nuclear family. And fourth, we need to get these smelly tree huggers good jobs in industry--say, in the timber industry, or maybe pharmaceuticals--so they'll stop undermining our great economy, the greatest in all the world."

As the crowd rose to its feet, the host stepped in and thanked his guests; and then the director held up his biggest applause sign, the theme music faded in, the credits began to roll, and the Geronimo Schwartz Show came to a climactic end.

That week Geronimo received thousands of angry letters from viewers condemning Senator Wentworth's volatile speech. But these were outnumbered ten to one by the flood of mail praising the guts it took to air such unpopular views, and hoping that Senator Wentworth and General Schmauckbinnder would soon return to the show.

Late that night Hannibal and Elmo had a long talk. Hannibal had his doubts about the Wentworth campaign, but Elmo insisted on upholding his obligation to General Schmauckbinnder, whose forces, after all, had saved the duo from the guerrillas down south. Besides, the hermit had begun to believe that this might be the mission which, you will recall, the elder Frumpkin had presaged on his deathbed.

The following morning began with a 6:30 wakeup call that reminded our heroes of prison. At breakfast Senator Wentworth tapped his orange juice glass with a spoon and announced that he had a surprise for Elmo and Hannibal. After a dramatic pause, a rustle was heard coming from the kitchen, and out waddled the former widow Purdy.

"Momma!" cried Hannibal as the widow smothered him between her breasts. "I thought I'd neva see ya agin...oh, Momma!"

Just then the Reverend Slappy Eisenhower appeared from the kitchen, followed by Ranger Quigly. There wasn't a dry eye in the place by the time the five friends had finished their hugging and carrying on, at which time none other than Lefty the Chinese pug came hobbling onto the scene. Hannibal and Elmo picked the ecstatic pooch up and let her lick their faces to her little heart's content. Even Senator Wentworth got up to let the little pup lick his face, an act that didn't go unnoticed by the camera crew discreetly filming the whole event for future use.

It turns out that upon hearing about Lefty's untimely separation from her masters, the kindhearted general had ordered his Marines to find her and bring her to him at the Imperial Hotel, no matter what the cost. And the senator's staff had managed to track down the widow and the Reverend and the ranger, who had taken up residence at their old address on Witherby Street, where the widow Purdy had become Mrs. Slappy Purdy-Eisenhower weeks before in a ceremony presided over by Consular General Quigly.

After breakfast the senator and his entire entourage were herded out to the parking lot, where an army of photographers and reporters stood waiting behind a barricade draped with bunting. In the center of the lot sat two silver busses which had been made up to look like old-timey cabooses. On one side each bus sported a huge picture of the senator and the general smiling down from atop a handsome white horse, while on the other side campaign placards announced the First Quadrennial Wentworth Whistlestop Tour in letters ten feet tall.

Senator Wentworth handed his orange juice to an aide and climbed a platform that had been erected between the busses. Behind him a flag fifty feet high was hoisted as the loudspeakers mounted atop each bus began to blare a spirited version of the national anthem. General Schmauckbinnder stood at attention on the first step of the platform, saluting so proudly he seemed to be fighting back tears.

Towards the end of the anthem, a fireworks display was launched that reflected beautifully off the skyscrapers that surrounded the imperial Hotel. Senator Wentworth then made a short but rousing speech announcing the whistlestop tour, his words and demeanor hearkening back to simpler times.

Before the press could ask any questions the senator boarded one of the busses and the general the other, and off they roared, one going north and the other south. Hannibal and Elmo rode with the general, who had taken quite a liking to Lefty, while Ranger Quigly and the Eisenhowers rode with Senator Wentworth.

By the time the news aired that evening, each bus had stopped in half a dozen cities and towns and entertained literally hundreds of reporters. Elmo and Hannibal had been introduced town-by-town as examples of the successful Gentle Light Urban Renewal Program, while Ranger Quigly was touted as a symbol of the irrepressible heart of the civil servant. The widow and the Reverend re-enacted their wedding vows endlessly to promote family values among the nation's ethnic minorities.

That night, and for many nights thereafter, the campaigners slept like babies. The pace of the two-pronged whistlestop tour proved to be truly exhausting. The senator seemed to keep his spirits up by drinking prodigious quantities of orange juice, while the stalwart General just plugged along as if he were on a picnic.

One afternoon along the way, the general and his charges pulled into a small mining town where a live interview had been set up for broadcast on the evening news. The reporter, a handsome blonde named Shalin Simone, had set up at the entrance to a coal mine. Behind her stood a group of cleancut young miners holding flags and banners.

Elmo and Hannibal were led to the front of the group of miners, while the general stood proudly at ease beside Ms. Simone. As the lights were fired up, a countdown began. The producer called for quiet, and the interview commenced.

"General Schmauckbinnder," began Ms. Simone, "recently reports have surfaced alleging a growing rift in the Wentworth campaign. Is there any truth to this?"

"No, no," laughed the general. "We're just one big happy family. No truth to that whatsoever."

"You say you're like a family," the reporter continued. "But isn't it true that you yourself are travelling with two known sex offenders, one a transvestite, and the other a pedophile?"

The general laughed even harder and said, "No, no, that's just typical mudslinging coming from our opponents. Our staff is just as right as rain, right down to the unpaid staffers."

"I have in my hand a psychiatrist's report that states that one Hannibal Purdy was treated for deviance at the J. Edgar Pippin Memorial Penitentiary. Do you deny the authenticity of this report?" Ms. Simone handed the paper Perry Mason-like to General Schmauckbinnder.

The general glanced at the document and shook his head gravely. "Yet another attempt at character assassination on the part of our opponents. Mr. Purdy is a valued member of our Gentle Light Urban Renewal Program, and in fact, he's right here behind us. Hannibal?"

Hannibal stepped reluctantly forward and stood awkwardly between the general and the reporter. "I just loves yo' outfit," he gushed to Ms. Simone, who quickly stifled her joy at the compliment.

"So, do you deny these charges?" she asked, thrusting the microphone into Hannibal's face.

"Absolutely," boomed the general as he put his arm around the frightened transvestite. "This man is topnotch. Why, he saved his best buddy from radical guerrillas during our successful invasion last month. He's all man."

"Is this true?" Ms. Simone demanded, again thrusting the microphone towards Hannibal.

"Well, de truth is dat he save me," mumbled the Negro. "I reckon de gen'ral jus' got it backards."

"Oh yes," laughed Schmauckbinnder, nudging Hannibal back towards the smiling miners. "Mr. Frumpkin saved Mr. Purdy after he was shot in the arm by the guerrillas. Elmo?"

Now Elmo stepped forward and gazed innocently into the camera.

"So then," said the reporter, shoving a second document under the general's nose. "This must be the pedophile."

"No ma'am," Elmo responded. "There was a misunderstanding."

"Thank you, Elmo," chuckled the general. "Now about the campaign..."

"A misunderstanding?" snapped Ms. Simone. "It says here that you were charged with four felonies and several misdemeanors. It doesn't sound like a 'misunderstanding' to me."

Without the slightest change in his countenance, the hermit responded. "Perhaps the authorities were overzealous," he said. "But I hold no animosity towards them."

"Then you blame the authorities for your problem?" asked the reporter.

"No ma'am," said Elmo. "There is no need to blame anyone."

Ms. Simone seemed at a loss for words as she glanced at the producer, who indicated that she still had airtime to fill. "So, Mister Frumpkin," she stammered, grasping for a question. "In light of your denials, do you see a need to overhaul the criminal justice system?"

"I see no need for such a system at all," Elmo responded. "Justice is not amenable to systemization. "Several of the miners nodded in agreement.

"Then you disagree with Senator Wentworth's call for a ten billion dollar superfund to escalate the war on crime?" asked the bemused reporter, perfectly aware of the general's growing consternation.

"Perhaps money is not the answer," Elmo answered.

"Excuse me?" blurted the reporter, who had never heard such blasphemy uttered in public.

"I have never had any money and do not understand its value," Elmo explained.

"Then what is the answer?" continued the reporter.

"Perhaps a nice vegetable garden to keep one self-sufficient," said Elmo.

"And where do you propose to place these... gardens?"

"There seems to be ample room beside the freeways and public buildings."

"So you think our massive crime problem could be solved with some shovels and bags of seed?"

General Schmauckbinnder stepped in and began to make a point, but Ms. Simone persisted. "And do you have a solution to the problems of government as well, Mr. Frumpkin?" she asked, a bit sardonically.

"I believe anyone can benefit from the cultivation of the soil," he answered. "And I see little need for government in the first place."

"So you would have the president and the Congress out planting cucumbers on the nation's highways?"

"It would probably help them to think more clearly."

Ms. Simone scoffed playfully and asked, "Does Senator Wentworth know about your plan to save the country? Will he be out planting cucumbers anytime soon?"

"I would be happy to teach him."

"And mightn't you also teach our foreign enemies about cucumbers?" she quipped. "Could vegetables end war as we know it?"

"I would need the aid of a translator," said Elmo.

By now General Schmauckbinnder was rocking nervously from foot to foot. His face began to turn red, and a vein popped out on his forehead. He cast a stern glance at the producer, who signaled that a commercial break was imminent.

"One last question, for the general," said Ms. Simone as Schmauckbinnder puffed out his chest and smiled cordially. "General Schmauckbinnder, do you grow a vegetable garden?"

The general raised a finger and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

"There you have it," said Shalin Simone as she faced the camera and took on that air of certainty that newsactors use to finish off a report. "Confirmation of a growing rift in the scandal-ridden campaign of former senator Fenton T. Wentworth. Now back to you, Pete."

After Elmo's performance in what was later called the "mineshaft incident," requests to interview the hermit flooded the Wentworth Campaign. The incident had been seen by millions on national television, and the press was quick to label Elmo's remarks a "brilliant satire on the state of the nation." There were rumors of million dollar book deals and a movie of the week; but Wentworth's handlers carefully shielded the hermit from such blatant opportunism.

The campaign team began damage control immediately. The general and the senator both paid hasty visits to vegetable farms, where they donned overalls and went to work in the fields. In the meantime the Occidental League (which, you have surely deduced, was backing the campaign) arranged through the courts to have Hannibal and Elmo's criminal records expunged.

From then on, the hermit and the transvestite were kept out of the spotlight, and the campaign soon began to regain its momentum. Attacks were launched against Wentworth's opponents in rapid succession, and similar attacks against the senator were angrily explained away as crude attempts at character assassination. Reports that Senator Wentworth was secretly being backed by the O.L. were countered with a mass distribution of leaflets cleverly emblazoned with the letters GLUR!P. (Any association with the Underground Radicals was, of course, subsequently denied.)

As election day drew nearer, the two halves of the Wentworth Whistlestop Tour began to converge on the nation's capitol. General Schmauckbinnder was the first to pull into that hallowed city, where he visited a series of veterans hospitals and cemeteries to remind the voting public of his great military victory just months before.

Hannibal and Elmo followed the general around the capitol like puppies after a meat wagon. Never had they feasted on fare such as that offered up by supporters of the campaign. Hannibal picked up a taste for champagne and Black Sea caviar, and he absolutely reveled in the fashions of the elite; and even Elmo soon learned the etiquette of the luxuriant salad buffets that were so popular among the overfed matrons of that time.

Just three days before the election, Senator Wentworth rolled into town amid all the fanfare his budget could afford. A grand rally was planned for that very afternoon, so the whole entourage was in a tizzy.

Our heroes missed the hectic preparations, as they had been invited to a brunch with the outgoing president, who was sensitive to how history would view certain aspects of his record. In his post-brunch speech, the president veritably gushed over the heartwarming story of Hannibal Purdy and Elmo Frumpkin, which seemed to make several on the presidential dais somewhat uncomfortable. (Hannibal and Elmo were lucky enough to dine with the Secretary of Labor in a quiet alcove beside the kitchen, owing to the strictly calculated seating arrangements.)

After the brunch a limousine whisked the duo back to the park where the rally was to be held. The two busses were parked in a "V" at the edge of a broad meadow, and a stage had been built between them. Behind the busses rose a flag as tall as a four story building, and every tree and fencepost was festooned with red, white and blue bunting.

As the park filled with supporters and camera crews, a flatbed truck pulled up. On its broad bed a bandstand had been erected, and a Dixieland jazz ensemble was blaring out a spirited rendition of an otherwise somber military march. The mood of the crowd was instantly transformed into that of a football pep rally, and indeed a corps of majorettes marched onto the scene at just that moment, kicking their legs high and tossing batons into the air.

The band played two quick refrains of "When the Saints Go Marchin' In," followed by a peppy introductory piece that cued Senator Wentworth to make his appearance. The senator stepped out onto the rear platform of his mock-caboose bus, and the crowd raised a hearty cheer; and then General Schmauckbinnder stepped onto the rear platform of his bus as a volley of thunderous fireworks blossomed high above the park.

When the applause finally died down, the candidates descended from their respective faux-cabooses, each of which let loose a series of blasts on its vintage steam whistle, much to the delight of the throng. The senator climbed onto the stage, followed closely by Schmauckbinnder and the campaign staff. Again the crowd raised a cheer, which redoubled as huge canisters of red, white and blue confetti were shot into their midst and a thousand balloons ascended into the sky.

Senator Wentworth approached the lecture and tried valiantly to quiet his supporters; but the more he begged for quiet, the louder they roared. It was several minutes before he was able to begin his speech, and even then he strained to be heard over the buzz.

"My fellow citizens," he began, "I cannot tell you how much it means to me to see you all here today." Once again the crowd applauded wildly, as they would continue to do at every turn throughout his speech. "Thank you kindly. Thank you. Now let me begin by saying to each and every one of you that we have come a long, long way. But all our work will have been in vain if we do not buckle down and push this thing right to the wire. Our polls show us neck and neck with the next fella; and I don't have to tell any of you what a horse's ass he is. So let's whip 'im in the stretch and let 'im eat our dirt!"

The mob was whipped into a frenzy by the endearing homespun frankness of their candidate, and they began waving their little plastic flags frantically. The senator took a swig from his orange juice and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

"Now let me tell you something about my opponents," he continued. "The shenanigans they've tried to pull in the last four months are downright shameful. Shameful, that's what they are. I defy any one of 'em to prove one damn thing, and I'll step aside and bother 'em no more. But do you know what? They can't! The connivin' skunks can't prove one iota of what they've said. And not just about me, oh no. The spineless punks have even gone after my family, and after my trusted campaign staff. No one is immune from their little leaks and innuendoes. No one...unless, my friends, we run 'em outta town on a pole come election day!"

The rally went on like this for some time, and General Schmauckbinnder gave a short speech of his own. Towards the end of the rally thousands of leaflets and ribbons were rained onto the mob from a hot air balloon, and Senator Wentworth made some closing remarks. Then he and the general and their entourage filed down from the stage and into the rear of his bus as the band played "Happy Days Are Here Again."

The crowd cheered for several minutes before the senator made one last appearance on the rear platform of his faux-caboose. He waved gratefully and saluted his supporters, who seemed as if they could go on cheering all day. Someone handed him a baby from below, and Wentworth gave the little tike a kiss as flashbulbs popped and cameras whirred.

But just as the formerly honorable Senator Fenton T. Wentworth began to taste victory, and just as his handlers sensed him rising in the evening news opinion polls, something terrible happened.

Just how it happened, no one knows for sure. Some say a man in a Chesterfield overcoat dropped a Cuban cigar into the senator's orange juice. Others swear they saw a poof from a nearby knoll, indicating the possibility of a conspiracy. Still others mention that the baby looked suspiciously like a midget; nor can one ignore the many well-documented cases of spontaneous combustion.

At any rate, the senator's orange juice somehow caught fire and flared up like a Molotov cocktail, causing him to drop the baby clear off the edge of the faux-caboose's rear platform. In the resulting commotion, the baby disappeared, along with its mother and the man in the Chesterfield overcoat--and the hopes of the Wentworth/Schmauckbinnder ticket.

Three days later Fenton Wentworth placed third in the election. All GLURP and campaign funds were instantly reconverted to private use. General Schmauckbinnder retired from the military with a five-million dollar book deal. Our heroes, along with Quigly and the Eisenhowers, returned to the Big City, where they reclaimed their cardboard and plastic manor on Witherby Street.

Elmo was amazed at the resilience of his Negro companion, who dove right back into the hospitality business, it being one of the most lucrative times of the year for those thusly employed. As for the hermit, he resolved to once again seek honest work.

By that Friday afternoon, Elmo had canvassed the entire business district, but there were simply no jobs t