On hot days after the dusty Mexican Squirrel Fight, no one likes Yazoo — nor does he expect them to. He has been an incendiary and worked hard at it: heckling the mean, little Latin-tongued squirrels, tossing hickory nuts onto the mat breaking up the game…No one likes that; and when we go to Peggy’s for good lemonade and fried raising pie, he is not invited. Yet, he is there anyway — with Dwayne.
I remember Dwayne.
“Excellent-looking ogmer,” they would say.
“In the pygmy grade,” some would offer.
And you’d never assume any of them had not for a moment in their full lifetimes seen an ogmer, but at the Fresh Trout Cafe, no one ever shows their true cards or reveals their real teeth nor discloses an ignorance of ogmers — especially in front of one, or in the presence of one so popularly disliked as Yazoo.
Speaking of which, no one dislikes Yazoo more than Peggy, for he is an uncongenial client and one of the few so noticeably carefree with his habits to require cleaning his table after he leaves. This is a considerable hardship inasmuch as she is paid the same rate in between diners for eating lettuce wraps or smoking Pall Malls or blowing soap bubbles as cleaning messy tables.
Yet. oh, what a fresh little farm egg she is! Obese, yet very comely, she is like the finest cheese slicer — efficient and very professional in her accommodation.
“Something for you?” she asks Yazoo.
“Some soup for my ogmer,” he replies.
I watch her artificial smile tighten to the breaking point, as she draws a pencil from her hairdo and points to a sign, smaller than a tire patch pasted on the cash register: “We serve who we admire.”
“Soup for my ogmer,” Yazoo counters, and Peggy’s eyes follow his outstretched, arm and aimed index finger toward a sign, larger than a courthouse flag hanging on a wall next to the pool room door which reads, “Our Customers Make Us Rich!”
Much applause and scattered gunfire shatter the cafe calm as patrons erupt into an impromptu demonstration.
Peggy recedes to the kitchen to heat a can of chicken tinga.
After lunch, Yazoo’s spirits were uncommonly blithe as he hummed an old melody often associated with Jingles Iglesias. Abruptly his reverie was interrupted by a soft whimper from Dwayne. It was then he noticed the ogmer’s puffy eyes and sniffling nose.
“Dwayne, what ever is the matter?” inquired a concerned Yazoo.
Dwayne shot a downtrodden gaze toward the sidewalk and said, “What occurred in the Fresh Trout, never would have happened if I was a rabbit.”
At this, Yazoo rolled his eyes. It was a familiar refrain — Dwayne’s longing to be a rabbit.
At that moment, they found themselves in front of the Bijou de la Garza, and so entered.
The cinema was a tradition after the squirrel fight where the only two souls in the whole of Santo Dorao who could abide Yazoo awaited. To Beula and Zooela DeVille, fellowship with Yazoo was a celebration of their tolerance.
“How is the movie?” inquired Yazoo.
“Shut up! You’ll spoil it!” Zooela retorted.
As a matter of fact, it was a very good movie — Roxie Jasmine in Maybe I Love You. It was the one where she sings her theme song, Why Do I Forget?
“Why is Dwayne crying?” asked Beula.
“Shut up!” said Zooela.
“No! Dwayne is in misery! Can’t you tell?”
Zooela peeled her eyes from the screen to observe Dwayne leaning forward in his theater seat, sobbing uncontrollably into his soggy mitts.
“Why is he crying?” Zooela, now concerned, asked of Yazoo.
“Well, it’s pretty silly…”
“It’s not silly to Dwayne,” Beula opined.
“You see…,” began Yazoo, “September is almost here, and he’s begging me to send him to rabbit school.”
“Aren’t you gonna?” asked Beula.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“I like him as an ogmer…And it’s very hard to be a rabbit!”
“If he wants to be a rabbit,” chimed in Zooela, “you oughta let him.”
“It’ll break his heart,” reasoned Yazoo.
“You should let him try,” pleaded Beula.
“You’re being an incendiary!” said Zooela.
“I want to be a rabbit!” sobbed Dwayne.
And, suddenly, the entire theater audience turned their eyes from a chortling Roxie Jasmine to the small drama occurring in the folding chairs.
No one could understand. An ogmer was something fine to the deficient Yazoo — like an obscure zoological curiosity all his own.
It was good to have an ogmer — because no one else in Santo Dorao had one.
But Dwayne wanted to be a rabbit, and had been bemoaning his ogmerisity for months now.
“What’s the use of having an ogmer who is miserable not being a rabbit? There ain’t no joy for nobody.” deduced Yazoo.
Yazoo sadly looked at the distraught Dwayne.
“Dwayne, if you want to be a rabbit,…I’ll buy your books,” said Yazoo.
And the small auditorium exploded with laughter, applause, shouts of jubilation, and loud coughing.
Beula and Zooela laughed and cried and slapped Yazoo on the back.
Dwayne happily pulled at his ears.
For the second time in a day, Yazoo was a hero.
He unconsciously reached into his pocket and retrieved a hickory nut. He looked at it as it wobbled back and forth in the palm of his hand.
“How quickly they forget,” he mused.
It was then, on the mammoth silver screen, Roxie Jasmine sat in a sunny arboretum, surrounded by pretty flowers and little children dressed in frilly pastels of lace and linen. Suddenly a guitar was strummed and she began to warble one of her golden standards, “Bunnies Was Made To Love!”
While she sang, folks in top hats and long winter coats passed to and fro carrying big packages wrapped in paper and shiny ribbons — Easter presents for their rabbits at home.
There was not a dry eye in the house. Yazoo chanced a gaze toward Dwayne.
Beula, Zooela, and Dwayne were gone!
They had returned to Peggy’s for lemonade and a round of lettuce wraps and some stimulating repartee with their elated, neophyte hare-friend.
