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[A-Schwarzenegger]

187. On pitchers...

"Sit down, Sir!"

Oscar kept standing.

"Stand!" I say.

He did.

"Are you aware of the meelee you created today climbing that tree and throwing walnuts at everybody? You threatened the civilization of the entire village."

He raised one eyebrow as if he had not understood a word I said and furthermore had no desire to.

"I want your word that this is the last time I hear about such undifferentiated aggression." I made some Old World gestures to illustrate my point, involving my thumbknuckles, hipbones, and nostrils.

As he looked deep in my eyes, he gave up a timid walnut-scented fart, which I mistook as a sign of reluctant understanding, or even better, shame.

Oh, how the bridge of our communications was cluttered with obstacles and mysteries.

Staring at him as he stared at me, each refusing to budge, I begun to notice what a troublingly picturesque mug he had, and it gave me a brainstorm.

Namely, I could make a few easy bucks by taking pictures of Oscar's mug and pasting them on those tourist postcards of dumb points of interest that Ethel Sampson sells in her curio shop. Then go peddle them around the village myself.

Even when he was laying around snoring and drooling with his mouth hanging open and his tail fluttering around, Oscar was more interesting than a bunch of fading pictures of "The Hmmm Moat Getting Fumigated" or "Old Tire Suspension Bridge" or "Shane Washington Frowning In Front of Her Fortune-Teller Garage Shop."

Then I thought—two birds with one stone—get Shane to hawk the postcards while she’s campaigning for mayor. That way I could take a nap and wait for the dough to roll in.

I looked away first to let him think he’d won, and he settled into his bookcase bed and begun snoozing away triumphantly. I got the Polaroid and snapped a quick one but bam!—he woke up hysterical from the flash and took off like ball lightning who known where.

I set down the picture to dry on the coffee table and began to calculate how much to charge per postcard, when here he raced back in, grabbed the picture and ate it whole, boom. There it is, then it ain’t.

"Nice going," I say. "You ate my meal ticket."

He gave me a overcast look. I wondered about him ingesting that gunk, the magic developing glue. But he seemed as normal as ever. He had a stomach like a iron lung.

He sat about a inch away from the Polaroid camera on the table, gleering at it like a mortal enemy. He was right in front of Shane’s green and pink tulip wallpaper, and he begun to disappear before my eyes, as in become unseeable.

Frankly, his fur started turning into the same colors and layout as the tulip wallpaper. In other words, his fur begun camoflauging itself.

I wanted to call somebody to come see it, or not see it, but I was scared to move. This had to be Old God trying to guide me to make a little cash off the situation.

But if I snapped a picture of it, people would think it was a picture of wallpaper. I could draw a black line around where he was, but it would look like something died, been outlined by a policeman, and carted off. Who would want to send that home on a postcard?

Then I was afraid he’d get stuck in that wallpaper pattern. It was bad enough as wallpaper, much less as him.

It struck me that this had to do with the camera and getting his picture tooken. He must have heard about Indian folklore where you lose a slice of your spirit if your face gets caught in that box. So he tried to stop being interesting enough to take a picture of by turning into Shane's wallpaper. It all made sense now.

I got up slowly, placed the camera in the back of the closet, shut the door, and pretended to lock the lock that’s not on it.

Immediately he begun to relax, breathe regular, and change from wallpaper back into his normal colors and patterns. He contributed one more walnut-flavored fart to the environment, and collapsed like a fur accordion into a six-hour nap. It had knocked him for a loop, turning into tulip wallpaper to save his soul from being took.