Child

It’s the machine made of words! I better dig fast!

Child picks up her shovel and digs. Miltonic Humiliator knocks on Reptile’s door. Reptile opens the door. Sound of insects from inside Reptile’s house. Child removes capgun from hole and puts cash box in hole. There is now a gap in Pelican’s steps. Child carries capgun in one hand and a tape recorder in the other over to a tree. Miltonic Humiliator pitches babble at Reptile.

Miltonic Humiliator

That slender little shred of doubt

that comes to every boy and girl

that orders all the ones apart

that shapes the armies and our hearts

to keep the tune of “it’s no use”

to change the tune of “it’s no use”

to march to the tune of “it’s no use”

while increments

leap to judgments

and I ask you on this fine day, is this good or bad or neither?

Reptile

I think I remember who you are. How many years have you been in your position? Welcome. On the one hand, you go back before my time, and on the other, I go back before yours.

Miltonic Humiliator

Is this good or bad or neither?

Reptile

I can’t say. I don’t recall.

Child turns on tape recorder. Falls asleep to the Songs of Innocence.

I am set to light the ground,

While the beetle goes his round:

Follow now the beetles’ hum,

Little wanderer hie thee home

Fish rounds corner to her house. She’s carrying bags.

Reptile

East to the left.

Fish

No. Oh. Were you talking to me?

Reptile

I think so.

Fish

There’s a feeling I get sometimes of endless duplication.

Reptile

Yes, we reptiles call it the collective buzz of erasure.

Fish

You know, sometimes I’m amazed that we live next to each other. But how would you feel if you lived on a block of all reptiles?

Reptile

I did once. It was very competitive.

Fish

And what was that like?

Reptile

If I provide you with several of my most esteemed memories, you will probably believe there are more where those come from, and I will have earned your respect.

Fish

I am stung with the deception that the past recollections interfere with one’s current state of affairs.

Reptile

I could respond to that in one of several ways. I could be glib about my own background. Dismiss my pretensions and conform to popular notions about the reptile mentality. I am often disposed to adopt that kind of pose in shopping malls. I could propose that you are using self-effacement as a means of getting your packages through the door. I notice, for instance, that there is melting ice dripping through one of your sacks. I suggest you put it down before it bottoms-out. The last time one of mine bottomed-out, I was living in that competitive homogeneous locale we were discussing briefly. I could respond by assuming that the deception you’ve been stung with has been ousted. Or the sting has, is, no longer operative and just barge ahead into that treasonous territory of one’s, my, own self-esteem. For how did we get to this point in the discussion in the first place?

Fish

I must have started it.

Reptile

You asked me what it was like to live solely among my own species, within that dry scaly geometry, among spectacular diamonds and golden bands, and onyx dotted kinsmen. The silence, the indifference was spectacular.

Fish

I was just on my way in. My groceries are melting.

Reptile

So they are.

Fish enters house.

Reptile

Yoo hoo, Miltonic Humiliator, did you hear that?