“Money, get back / I’m all right, Jack / Keep your hands off my stack / New car / Caviar / Four-star daydream / Think I’ll buy me a football team.”
The gala crowd erupts, to which Sprite adds on top: “Tear down this wall, Mr. Orange!”. The crowd continues to clap. A “Tear Down The Wall” chant begins slowly, then builds, until Alo Bama takes the mic and motions everyone to calm down.
“*Freedom*. (pause) It’s what everyone wants, everyone cherishes.” Alo Bama indicates Sprite sitting back in the crowd. “Like our tree friend Mr. Sprite, waiting to be unencumbered by the shackles of The Wall, ready to join Wallytown as a *full* *fledged* *citizen*.”
The crowd claps enthusiastically again. “With inalienable rights,” he says over them, calming them down once more. “And established levels of treatment honoring decency, character (pause), respect.” “You go Alo!” someone shouts in the rear, prompting him to reply, “I’m going, I’m going. ” Scattered laughter is heard. “I’m telling it like it is.”
—–
“I thought you were going to dramatically change into Green Squirrel or Roger Pine Ridge or something to show who you really are,” spoke Natali seated beside Sprite now, his date for the night.
“Ahh, it just didn’t seem to fit the bill. Didn’t feel right. It was *my* poem and that’s what counts.”
“I suppose… oh he’s starting to talk about the Bottle Mound indians now.”
—–
“On the one hand,” Alo Bama extends his left arm and opens his hand. “Orange. On the other…” Alo Bama extends his other arm with the mic. “Purple… Violet, some say, although they prefer the former and we should respect (pause) their rights. And they’ve fought with each other, fought, fought, fought, down through the years, the centuries (pause). And what’s come of it, hmm?” A “free the trees” protest comes from the same person as before in the back. Alo Bama ignores it this time.
“Death is what came of it. And *disappearance* (pause) in time.”
—–
“You know he really is quite the orator,” opined Dr. I.C. Yourinsides to Captain Spocari. But when he didn’t respond she found that he’d fallen asleep.
“*Really* Captain. But I guess you’re all knackered out from this afternoon, hehe. Twice a day keeps the doctor okay.”
—–
“And now. (pause) The Mound. (pause) Comes here. Leemon or Leeman standing on the beach just beyond 1/2 refuses to even admit it is there. He can’t fully *see* (pause) this *new* New Island. The Greys *descend*…
… and fall backwards, face down (pause) in the sand.”
—–
“When’s he going to get to Jimmy?” whispers Billy Bloodsworth on a back couch to Lavender. “I can tell he’s nervous up there, ready to come out of his shell like Alo Bama and Bill C. did before him.”
“Be patient,” replies his sister-in-law. “He has to get to the point in his own, circular way. That’s what makes him such a great speaker.”
“Jimmy was better.”
“Nice of you to say.”
“He *was.*”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 