It was a quarter past ten when Halgrim the book guardian finished taking the daily inventory. However today, (a fine spring morning, if a little windy and changeable) looked to be getting off to a bad start.
A book was missing.
He frowned. He checked again. He cast about the shelves for a misplacement. He clambered down and set off on sure footed purposeful feet around the boat where he guarded the Books to see if it had been moved.
‘It’ll turn up,’ thought Halgrim. ‘I don’t know, I tend and protect these books all the day long – if they are moved when I am off duty, it’s hardly my responsibility,’ but even while he muttered this, scrambling up the mountainous bed to scale the wall and check the high corner shelf, he couldn’t believe it. Books were his soul. Deep under the jewelled lock of his tiny troll heart, his spirit was made of fine pages covered with the ink and whisper of language. A missing book was anathema and it corresponded to a now missing part of his very being – words and thoughts that were gone.
Having completed his search of radiators, high tables, steps, window ledges, even the bathroom cupboard (sometimes!), he could fully ascertain that this book was gone.
‘Come Binky,’ Halgrim called to his war rabbit. He mounted its ears. ‘We have an important quest.’
****
The missing book, according the Halgrim’s fluid and fastidiously neat inventory (Halgrim had a masterful grip of a pen for a troll), was Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Highly typical for it to go off on a journey, Halgrim thought and now I must go after it.
The first trial was to ford the Great River. Now occasions like this were always fraught because despite both Halgrim and Binky being excellent swimmers, Binky was a most corpulent rabbit on the inside which made staying afloat problematic. Nevertheless, the river must be forded, and Halgrim called on the bream and carp gods to follow beneath, blowing bubbles to aid floativity. In this way they managed most of the way across before encountering their first enemy. Two white swans, statuesque, snowy and beautiful in their malevolent deadliness were heading for them. While having no interest in Binky, they were highly interested in the fish below, without which, Binky would be sunk. And swans have their own magic. A disdainful look from their frozen eyes strikes such contempt to the heart of their victims that they are turned to stone. Halgrim knew there was little time as their elegant forms glided inexorably forward.
‘Ye gods Binky! Kick!! By Loki, rabbit, KICK!’
Of a sudden, a passing kingfisher (friends with Halgrim who always enjoyed his stories) heard the panicked shouts. He saw at once Halgrim’s danger and flitted off where his jewelled sapphire flash caught the eye of a heron, who, caught entirely off guard, stumbled over his long legs and caught himself only by flapping his long wings lugubriously upwards. In his annoyance he saw the swans and the struggling Halgrim. He knew this meant fish beneath and this ever patient shawled pescatore flapped over to challenge the swans.
In the commotion that ensued, Binky and Halgrim reached the shore and tumbled spluttering, safe, onto the bank.
****
After riding together for considerable time, Halgrim tugged Binky’s ears up short.
‘No Binky. No dark green grey forest on this quest. Today we need the grey path. Even more so, we need to hitchhike.’
Conveniently here, a car stopped at a set of traffic lights and Binky hopped onto the chassis in a great leap before the car sped off again.
‘We’re On The Road Binky!’ Halgrim exclaimed with a dig of his troll elbow into Binky’s shoulder. Binky said nothing, but turned his black eyes away and sighed a rabbit sigh.
****
The miles were eaten and car after car hugged the white line in the middle of the grey road while Halgrim and Binky laughed at various hitchhikers swigging whisky from a bottle, passing round cigarettes and one who tried to urinate off the back of a truck but got it all over himself with every swerve.
‘I feel we’re getting closer Binky!’Halgrim shouted above the roar of the wind. ‘The narratives are blending! Let’s get off at the next gas station and look around.’ Binky twitched his nose in agreement and off they hopped along the highway.
Several hours later they were still traipsing glumly alongside the grey and barren Road. It had begun to rain, and rabbit and troll were soaked through.
‘I blame you for this Binky,’ muttered Halgrim, scowling thunderously. Binky merely sighed his rabbit sigh.
Eventually ahead through the rain, they saw another lone traveller squatting over a knapsack gloomily. They bounced over.
‘Bastard split with my jumper,’ said the traveller. ‘It had sentimental value.’
Halgrim rather took offense at this morose attitude when greater things like book were at stake.
‘Boy, what is your name?’ he asked imperiously.
‘Jack,’ said the young man. ‘Hey, you two hitching?’
‘Sure! Er, I mean, indeed we are,’ said Halgrim. ‘Where you going?’
‘Well, I’m heading out Mexico way for kicks. I’ve got this bottle o’ whiskey here if you want some to keep ya warm.’
‘I’m Icelandic,’ replied Halgrim. ‘I only drink schnapps. Listen Jack,’ he pursued, ‘I’m looking for something and I think you can help. Would you help Jack? It’s life and death!’
‘Why sure,’ drawled Jack, much cheered as the rain eased up. ‘If not, I’ve gotta pal down in Denver that could; Dean, or Will, or Neal. We’ll go there, where the waitresses have big sad eyes and cut about in slacks and fall in love with you, then we’ll all head down to Mexico to look for this thing, What kicks! You dig that? Whaddya say?’
Halgrim and Binky looked at each other with grey expressions. Halgrim sighed.
‘Sounds like I could…er, dig…that. One question.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do we really have to stop in Denver?’
And a lorry came and picked them all up.
****
After the extended jazz and bop party in a beer sodden bar with some sweating madman screaming ‘blow man!!!!’ into the saxophonist’s face, Binky turned to Halgrim and gave him the look which said: just how the hell did we get to America anyway?
Halgrim’s grey and fatigued voice replied: ‘suspension of disbelief.’
****
Their journey continued much in this vein. They seemed to be dragging about behind a mad Jack who ran from city to city in a drunken haze screaming and having intense all-night conversations with morose poets and homosexuals. Ironic when you think about it.
But after a while, Halgrim began to loosen up a bit and even accept a little whiskey and indulge in thoughtful whimsical conversations about freedom and life and joy, without burdens and societal constraints – for example like the daily guardianship of books.
‘So you see man,’ Jack was saying at the fireside of some god forsaken nowhere railway line somewhere south of Texas, ‘out there we have to find Truth. Now I knew when I saw you, here was a man –‘
‘-Troll,’ interjected Halgrim,
‘-Troll, who really digs life, you know? Digs people and this beautiful world and those stars and the humming nights of beats and bops and just people loving each other, you know? But all day, you gotta cut about in one place, counting books right? Now how is that freedom?’
‘Didn’t you write some books Jack?’
‘Yeah, well,’ faltered Jack, ‘but real beauty is in the madness of these gone cats over here! Whiskey?’
‘Why, thank you,’
Binky sighed his rabbit sigh.
‘Now, what we gotta do is head on down to Mexico where I know this end of the world most beautiful gone gal you ever did see. I want you to meet her. She got the most honey thighs and her hair is like a whole field a ripe wheat got inta them braids.’
‘What about Mary Lou?’ asked Halgrim.
‘Oh that’s all done with,’ confessed Jack. ‘We agreed it all, ya know? She is my real soul mate – she can read behind my eyes the secret truth of my soul and tell it like a beautiful poem.’
‘Hmm,’ mused Halgrim, sipping more whiskey and watching the fire’s gold liquid dance in crackling can-cans. ‘Ya think I could hook up with her?’
‘Why sure man!’ Binky sighed another rabbit sigh while Jack became gleeful at the idea. ‘Why she would just dig you. Ah man, you’re gonna love her. I’ll wire her, tell her to come right down to Mexico.’
‘Swell,’ muttered Halgrim, already slipping into a warm sleep. ‘Hey Jack?’ he managed. ‘How do you always seem to have gas and wire and beer money?’
‘What?’
****
Deep under a jewelled locked heart, the gap of pages and language grew blacker. Nature abhors a vacuum, as does a troll’s heart which was now sucking in through the written pages of aortas further words and lines and images as the narrative; the meaning lost itself, became confused and ripped.
Under the American night sky with the smoke from the fire shooting straight up, Binky’s nose twitched.
****
Mexico burst forth over the windscreen, hot and moist like opium with the flies smearing themselves into the sweating skin of man, woman, troll and rabbit alike. The moonless sky seemed to throw back the moisture and exotic mangroves and trailing moss kissed them through the open steamed windows.
‘Yeehaw!!’ shouted Dean, who they’d picked up on the way. With Mary Lou. And Clarice. And Rene’. And Neal. In fact it’s a good thing Halgrim and Binky could sit on knees as there was no seat room.
‘This is IT man!’ screamed Dean banging the steering wheel while a wild eyed, giggling and strained Jack trembled next to him.
‘This is the HEART man, the HEART of it!!’ Dean was shouting.
‘But is it the heart of the novel?’ queried Halgrim politely.
‘What?’ asked Rene’. ‘Here, have this bromide tab. It’s trippy!’
‘Sure!’ Halgrim eagerly took it.
‘WOOOO!!’ Halgrim swiftly began dancing crazily on the knees of the others and making out with an eager Mary Lou. ‘We is DAMN gone cats! Ain’t no one crazy like us, we FEEL life beating through us and this here road. Dig it man! DIG IT!!’
The others laughed and slapped him on the back, swerving the car to swig whiskey while Neal said something crude about Mary Lou being dug all the time.
Binky gave Halgrim a severe twitch of the nose, clearly indicating: that’s it, get out of the damn car NOW.
‘Excuse me luscious,’ slurred Halgrim as both Binky and Halgrim slipped out to hold conference on the roof of the car.
‘We’re close Binky, I can feel it!’ Halgrim was ranting, wild eyed and gritting his teeth.
Binky twitched his nose.
‘What do you mean no?’ Halgrim exploded. Binky twitched again.
‘Alright, no but yes. You are a most infernally cretinous Rabbit Head Binky!!’
Binky sighed his rabbit sigh. He twitched again.
He waited.
Halgrim sat down, stunned.
‘But it –‘ he spluttered.
Binky nodded.
‘And he -?’ Binky nodded again.
‘Even…?’ Another nod.
Troll and rabbit faced each other in the night breeze as tree branches came rushing towards them, that fortunately, they had enough presence of mind to get out of the way of before being swept clean off the car roof.
Halgrim took a deep breath.
‘Let’s articulate this clearly and get it straight like a sensible troll,’ he decided. He took a small bottle of aquae vite from a deep pocket in his overalls that he reserved for emergencies of perspicacity.
‘So, while they’re all in search of a sort of beautiful truth, free from society, its meaningless and poisonous trappings that they consider themselves above in some way…’
Binky’s twitch intimated: go on.
‘Jack’s actually dependent on his aunt for money to fund his great trip to be freed from the trappings of society, symbolised by abandoned wives and fatherless children all over America?’
And Mexico, Binky’s twitch conveyed.
‘So while it’s a damn good party – that’s all, in effect, they manage to achieve; a long, out-for-yourself, reckless, rejection of responsibility, misogynistic party! Isn’t it?’
The mangrove trees shimmered and wavered like a mushroom trip in crazy bright colours. When the world settled and stilled like a sunken rock in a pool of water, there were Binky and Halgrim beside their boat and its biblioteca, and there, on the muddy tow path beside them, was On The Road.
‘Oh thank the Gods Binky!’ shouted Halgrim. And Binky and Halgrim danced in praise to Odin and Loki, the divine storytellers, and waited blankly for someone to wander up and find them and put them back on the boat.
****
Later that evening, cozy and back in their rightful guardianship positions; after a perplexed Yates had found Halgrim and Binky on the grass and crashed back in grinning and accusing Chris of hiding them outside for larks and was this the new game – to sequest them and a random book every day in a new place? To which Chris turned her eyes away and sighed her patient sigh, Halgrim and Binky discussed the day.
‘You came through there Binky,’ Halgrim proudly said. Binky lowered his eyes modestly in acquiescence of his silent greatness. ‘The Gods will reward you handsomely.’
Binky sighed. He’d hoped for something more tangible.
‘Poor old Jack,’ continued Halgrim, ‘he died of alcoholism didn’t he?’
Binky blinked 48 times to indicate Jack’s age.
When he’d finished, Halgrim said, ‘Blimey. Well, I hope Big Sur doesn’t escape next. I don’t think I could keep up.’
Binky’s twitch indicated that it was not in the title’s nature.
‘Well, that’s as well, Loki be praised. Still.
‘It was a good party.’
Binky looked away and sighed his rabbit sigh.