being the blood’s color, jelly’s color; red maddening the bull, red bringing the bull down; red being the color of valentines, of left-handedness, and of a small princess’s newfound guilty hobby. His hair was red, his cowboy boots muddy, his heart a hive of musical bees.
Aided and abetted by the Woodpecker Gang, he blew up the chemistry building at the University of Wisconsin. Allegedly, work performed in that building was helpful to the war the United States government was then waging in Southeast Asia. The explosion occurred at three o’clock in the morning. The building was supposed to have been unoccupied. Unfortunately, a graduate student was in one ofthe laboratories, completing research that was to lead to his doctorate.
The diligent student was found in the rubble. Not all of him, but enough to matter. Confined to a wheelchair, he became a stereo jockey in a Milwaukee disco, trading snappy patter with good-timing office workers and playing Barry White records as if he believed in them. He might have been a decent scientist. His project, which was obliterated by the blast, was the perfection of an oral contraceptive for men.
Bernard made it safely back to the West. Only the radio news reports followed him to the hideout behind the waterfall. For once, the reports failed to entertain him. “I took a man’s legs,” he said to Montana Judy. “I took his manhood, I took his memory, and I took his career. Worse, I took his wife, who split when he ran out of manhood and career. Worse still, I might have spoiled chances for a male pill. Yikes. I’ve got to pay. I deserve to pay. But I’ll pay in my way, not society’s. As bad as I am, there isn’t a judge who’s good enough to sentence me.”
Another penitent might have joined a grubby religious cult or stood in a dark alley waiting for someone to come along and knock him in the head. As
his
payment, Bernard embarked on a chemical research project of his own. He tracked down, investigated, and tested various esoteric methods of birth control. “Who knows,” he told Montana Judy, “maybe I’ll come up with something better than that poor bozo’s pill.”
In herbal literature, it is written that comfrey is good for sprains and fit root for spasms; cascara will end constipation, wild cherry restore loss of speech; for nosebleed, buckthorn is recommended, and for pneumonia, try skunk cabbage. If you are stricken with sexual desire, the cure prescribed is lily root, and assuming that lily root fails, is unavailable, or is forsaken in the delirium of the illness, squaw vine, spikenard, and raspberry leaves all make childbirth a little easier. Western herbal literature isoddly lacking in contraceptive advice, Bernard discovered. Oddly lacking. He suspected tampering by the Church, but Bernard suspected the Church of a great many things.
In the anthropological texts that he pilfered from public libraries on both sides of the Rockies, it was told how the influence of tree spirits and water nymphs would promote fecundity, and though Bernard did not doubt that—female members of the Woodpecker Gang demonstrated a decided tendency toward fecundity out there in the wilderness where tree spirits abounded—he wondered where the deities were who guarded
against
the knockup. The Eskimo of the Bering Strait, the Huichol of Mexico, the Nishinam Indians of California, the Caffre tribes of South Africa, the Basuto, the Maori, and the Anno all made dolls in the likeness of the infant that was wanted, and that act of homeopathic magic brought pregnancy galloping. But what image could be fashioned to hold would-be embryos at bay? A decoction of wasp’s nest was administered internally to Lkungen brides to make them as prolific as insects. How much of a rhinoceros would a bride have to eat in order to emulate that animal’s habit of infrequent offspring?
In ancient times, when a people’s success—its survival, perhaps—depended upon steady multiplication, all
Aided and abetted by the Woodpecker Gang, he blew up the chemistry building at the University of Wisconsin. Allegedly, work performed in that building was helpful to the war the United States government was then waging in Southeast Asia. The explosion occurred at three o’clock in the morning. The building was supposed to have been unoccupied. Unfortunately, a graduate student was in one ofthe laboratories, completing research that was to lead to his doctorate.
The diligent student was found in the rubble. Not all of him, but enough to matter. Confined to a wheelchair, he became a stereo jockey in a Milwaukee disco, trading snappy patter with good-timing office workers and playing Barry White records as if he believed in them. He might have been a decent scientist. His project, which was obliterated by the blast, was the perfection of an oral contraceptive for men.
Bernard made it safely back to the West. Only the radio news reports followed him to the hideout behind the waterfall. For once, the reports failed to entertain him. “I took a man’s legs,” he said to Montana Judy. “I took his manhood, I took his memory, and I took his career. Worse, I took his wife, who split when he ran out of manhood and career. Worse still, I might have spoiled chances for a male pill. Yikes. I’ve got to pay. I deserve to pay. But I’ll pay in my way, not society’s. As bad as I am, there isn’t a judge who’s good enough to sentence me.”
Another penitent might have joined a grubby religious cult or stood in a dark alley waiting for someone to come along and knock him in the head. As
his
payment, Bernard embarked on a chemical research project of his own. He tracked down, investigated, and tested various esoteric methods of birth control. “Who knows,” he told Montana Judy, “maybe I’ll come up with something better than that poor bozo’s pill.”
In herbal literature, it is written that comfrey is good for sprains and fit root for spasms; cascara will end constipation, wild cherry restore loss of speech; for nosebleed, buckthorn is recommended, and for pneumonia, try skunk cabbage. If you are stricken with sexual desire, the cure prescribed is lily root, and assuming that lily root fails, is unavailable, or is forsaken in the delirium of the illness, squaw vine, spikenard, and raspberry leaves all make childbirth a little easier. Western herbal literature isoddly lacking in contraceptive advice, Bernard discovered. Oddly lacking. He suspected tampering by the Church, but Bernard suspected the Church of a great many things.
In the anthropological texts that he pilfered from public libraries on both sides of the Rockies, it was told how the influence of tree spirits and water nymphs would promote fecundity, and though Bernard did not doubt that—female members of the Woodpecker Gang demonstrated a decided tendency toward fecundity out there in the wilderness where tree spirits abounded—he wondered where the deities were who guarded
against
the knockup. The Eskimo of the Bering Strait, the Huichol of Mexico, the Nishinam Indians of California, the Caffre tribes of South Africa, the Basuto, the Maori, and the Anno all made dolls in the likeness of the infant that was wanted, and that act of homeopathic magic brought pregnancy galloping. But what image could be fashioned to hold would-be embryos at bay? A decoction of wasp’s nest was administered internally to Lkungen brides to make them as prolific as insects. How much of a rhinoceros would a bride have to eat in order to emulate that animal’s habit of infrequent offspring?
In ancient times, when a people’s success—its survival, perhaps—depended upon steady multiplication, all
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