Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 10
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 10 of 56
CHAPTER 10
“Divide and conquer,” said Albert. “Or, rather, isolate. We’ll herd the main officers away from the regular soldiers, and let the troops know that they won’t need to fight. We’ll let them know that the leaders, the top generals from each side, will represent the warring factions in a contest involving just the two of them.”
“What do you mean?” Ooga asked. “How will we herd the leaders away from the followers, and what will the generals do when they meet up with each other?”
“I think all we’ll need to do is tell the soldiers to stay back,” Stripes said. “Albert and Alexis can give them that message, while Rory, Ocero, Jowls, the Elephants, Terri and I (and Marmalade, of course) will be standing right behind them, doing what we do best.”
“What do we do best?” Terri asked.
“Look and sound intimidating,” Stripes answered.
“Oh, I don’t know if I could do that,” the Pterodactyl said. “My strong suit is beauty pageants.”
As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Stripes bit his tongue (not literally). He didn’t want to offend the flying Lizard. “You’ll do fine,” he assured Terri. “Just act natural. Stare at them, and occasionally blink and give your pinions a shake.”
“They might think I’m flirting with them if I do that.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. Trust me. I know these officer types. They make war, not love.”
“I have an idea,” said Yukyuk. “We can talk to the Horses, and have them carry the leaders to an area away from the rest.”
“Excellent plan; I could go talk to the Horses,” I volunteered. “I’m the only kind of animal that won’t cause a stir showing up in camp. I’ll have the generals’ Horses take them over the rise where Albert and Alexis can talk to them.”
“That’ll work,” Rovette said. “I’ll stay with the pups, and let them watch you in action from a safe distance.”
After Drako explained to Terri what a Horse was — and pointed one out to him, which a neighbor girl was riding in the pasture not far away, the flying Lizard yelled out, “Hey! That looks like my old friend E.O. Hippus, from prehistoric Germany, the original source of mustard and amber! But that ‘hoarse’ as you call it (I don’t know why, because I heard it whinny) is much larger than good ol’ E.O. It’s the only modern animal that is larger than its ancient counterpart — that I’ve seen, anyway.”
Ooga ignored Terri and inquired of Albert: “How will the generals represent each side? What will they do in this contest you have in mind?”
“I thought you would never ask,” Albert replied. “What I have in mind is a wrestling match” —
“With stretchy pants?!?” Rinky asked, wide-eyed.
“Yes, of course; What’s a wrestling match without stretchy pants?” Albert answered. “Then, there will be a 100-yard dash, followed by a chess match, and then a joke-telling contest.”
Now it was Ocero who stepped forward with a question. “I see how the winner of the wrestling match is easy enough to gauge” —
“The one who pins the other,” Jowls agreed.
— “and the winner of the 100-yard dash is obvious” — Ocero went on.
“The one who crosses the finish line first,” Jowls again responded.
— “and the winner of the chess match, too” —
“The guy who is smiling while the other one is cursing under his breath, upsetting the chessboard, and complaining that he didn’t ‘see the move’ because the sun was in his eyes.”
Upon hearing that theory on how you could tell who wins chess matches, Ocero gave Jowls a sideways glance, but simply continued with his line of questioning: “But what about the joke-telling contest — how will the winner be determined, Albert?”
“By a jury of their peers — 22 of them: us! The loudest laugh wins the joke-telling portion of the contest,” Albert answered.
“Peers? What are peers? We are peers?!?” Yukyuk asked.
“Peers are ones who pee,” Drako answered, bobbing her head up and down. “Yes, we are all pee-ers, because we all pee. Some of us pee on trees, some of us pee on the ground, others of us pee while flying,” she said, looking directly at Terri and rolling her eyes, “And some of us,” she went on, fixing Albert with a ‘can you believe this guy?’ look, “pee inside their houses!”
“No, that’s not what it is,” Albert objected, a bit miffed about being judged for utilizing indoor plumbing. “A peer is a soul of like social status. Being sentient beings ourselves, we are on a level with those generals. Besides, if being a peer was what you claim it to be, Drako, it would be more proper to use the word ‘urinater’ in mixed company, not ‘peer.’ Let us not be vulgar, profane, or common in our speech; and let us also be scientifically precise.”
“Sure, whatever,” Drako said, herself a little out of sorts now.
“What if the contest ends up in a tie, 2-2?” Marmalade asked. “Say each general wins two of the contests — what then?”
“Then they will have to engage in a fifth, deciding, contest — a tiebreaker, winner take all. The victor gets to stick a pole with a piece of cloth attached to it into the ground, declare that he won the battle fair and square, get his picture taken by Matthew Brady, and be interviewed by a newspaper reporter with a piece of cardboard with the word ‘Press’ written on it stuck in his hatband — and then he returns home and calls himself ‘Colonel’ for the rest of his life (all old soldiers took this title for themselves, whether they had been generals or privates or anything else), while the vanquished general has to take his troops and retreat, vowing to never return to re-open the fray,” Albert said.
“What is the all-important fifth and final contest?”
“If it comes to that, the generals must compose an essay on ‘What I Learned from The War Prayer’ (being allowed to read a copy of it first, which we will have to supply to them, as it wasn't written until 1905); and again, the relative merits of the essays are to be judged by a jury of their peers, namely us.”
Alexis then said: “If our aim is to prevent the KKK from ever existing, and to prevent the massacre at Fort Pillow, and to keep the bloody battle of Antietam from occurring, why not go back a little further in time and nip the whole thing in the bud by preventing the Civil War from happening in the first place?
“The main point of this operation is to prevent the negros from being taken advantage of, right?” she continued. “That’s why you want to stop the KKK and prevent the massacre at Fort Pillow. The Civil War, in a nutshell, was waged over slavery, so let’s ‘nip it in the bud,’ as you like to say, Albert.”
“That’s a good idea, Alexis,” Albert said, rubbing his chin. “The southerners claim the war was over States’ Rights, but the fact that the thing the federal government told them to do that they took issue with was the abolition of slavery (they were willing to follow other federal laws without making a federal case out of them — no pun intended) shows that the war was truly about slavery.
“So,” Albert continued, “To put it in a nutshell, our goal is to prevent the wanton slaughter of hundreds of thousands during the so-called ‘Civil’ war, and to abolish slavery, am I right?”
We all agreed with that.
“That being the case, why not go to Fort Sumter in 1861, and prevent the rebel forces from firing on that installation in Charleston, South Carolina?” Alexis suggested.
We all agreed to that, too.
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