Mahout Mountaintop

Off in the far away a scarecrow waved goodbye to the Dejesus, as today was the day he was to travel by foot and heel to the mountaintop on the other side of the other side. He took with him a digging trowel, a woolen blanket, his toothbrush and a fresh litter of gumbo and dried figs, all stowed away in his haversack, which he carried on a tumpline on his back, wary might he fall prey to a gadabout or a sore looser. Quickening his pace he fleet footed it to the valley that sat like a wan calf beneath the shadow of the mountaintop. If he kept the pace at a swift knot a mile he’d be at the foot of the mountaintop by noontime the marrow, if he lagged, by a quarter passed three. He carried a digging trowel in case he need quarry a trench, cautious as he was of a wayward archer, bow taut and at the ready, who might, as happenstance demands, cast an arrow into the stove of his heart. As he was unaccustomed to boohooing he carried a woolen blanket to dampen his cries, his larynx more oft than oft weeping like a banshee when the going got tough. No Captain Courageous was he, nor rectory pip or killer assassin.

Mijolla D. Mijolla lived in a hunter’s hut not far from the mountaintop. He fished for crayfish in the river that ran here and there beneath the mahout mountaintop. He had a three-legged one-eyed dog whose station in life was to picket the sheep from grazing the mayweeds that grew in the valley beneath the mahout mountaintop. He wore a tonsure to keep lice from bedding in the seams of his eyes.