Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins Read Free Book Online Page B

Bible means exactly what it says. True, you or me couldn’t build a house outta pure gold and have it hold up. Donald Trump couldn’t build a skyscraper outta gold and have it last. But, brothers and sisters, God can do anything he wants! It was God that made gold in the first place. God could build a city outta . . .” Buddy was about to say “grits” until it occurred to him that there were folks listening nowadays who probably were unfamiliar with grits. He surely wasn’t going to substitute tofu, California or no California. The idea of a tofu city was both sacrilegious and repulsive. “God could build a city outta . . . cobwebs if he took a notion to, and it would outlast Pittsburgh.” Yes, indeed, the Reverend Buddy Winkler would stand tall and say to the doubters and modernizers, “Pancreas! Sweetbreads are your gourmet term for your cow pancreas. Come on, Bob, out with it. That sturdy plastic lawn furniture by Bessie of Beverly Hills is mine !”
    Alas, Buddy Winkler never learned for certain if “pancreas” was the correct answer, for at that instant the game show was interrupted by a news bulletin. Another bomb had exploded on a crowded bus in Jerusalem, killing nineteen and wounding fifty-four.
    BOOMER THOUGHT that they would simply make love in the turkey, back in the rear of the bird on the corner double bed in “blush” color scheme with deep innerspring mattress and color-coordinated quilted bedspread (ample storage tucked away beneath the bed with “pack-at-home” removable trays). Ellen Cherry had other ideas. The sun was shining, it was the first week of spring, there was little traffic and no inhabitants—she wanted to do their friendly thing outdoors in the open air, in the zone of vegetation beneath a gulping sky.
    “We’ll have a picnic, too,” she announced, and she swept into a paper bag a box of crackers, a tin of sardines, a can of pork and beans, a jar of dill pickles, cheeses of both the cheddar and jack varieties, a can opener, a knife, and a spoon. Boomer added four frosted beers.
    Hand in hand, she short, he tall, she bouncy, he lame, they walked along the stream. The bank was shaded and many degrees cooler than it had appeared from inside the motor home, so they left the creek and set out across a sun-sprayed hill. Releasing her hand, Boomer walked a few paces ahead of her, meaning that Ellen Cherry, the brisker walker, was forced to throttle her gait. He meant to protect her from any venomous reptile awakened from hibernation by the bells of spring. To that end, he brandished a hefty stick, with which he swatted the bushes and clumps of grass that they passed. From time to time, as they searched for an ideal spot to spread their blanket, he glanced over his shoulder at her, regarding her, as he often did before they made love, as if she were a lost continent about to be rediscovered.
    It was sweet of him, she thought, to be protective; sweet and typically southern. In her experience, southern men tended to be charming that way. Protective as Brink’s, polite as tea, respectful as a job applicant during a recession. Yet, just beneath the surface of that inviting lagoon, fierce green lobsters clanged brutal claws. Possessive and pugilistic, even the most educated and aristocratic of them—lawyers, psychologists, investment bankers—engaged in fisticuffs with some regularity, usually at swell parties where ponds of bourbon were drained, and frequently over a harmless flirtation. Southern men were trapped in a backwater of masculine ethics, a classical male image that the rest of the population had largely outgrown. To be sure, their code of honor precipitated their chivalrous charm, but it also fostered the primate-band competitiveness that prevented them from relaxing unless dead drunk. Their strength was a facade, for it emanated from rules and protocol rather than from self-knowledge or inner resources. They were paper tigers, these Dixie white boys, though Ellen Cherry