TWO: RACK AND ZACK

The Orange Drink Brain Trust of the Standard Fifty-seven Counties is really not so many, as a matter of fact, it’s two. They put their heads together in their put-their-heads-together jar to think a way out of the paper bag they had slowly drifted into when they were not loitering, when they had plainly forgotten to wait. Rack and Zack were the first two and the only, they were the brains of the brains of the Trust of the trust, tho they did not trust the other, once together they were something, something larger than a cactus. The tricycles and the fivecycles were parked outside in the grassy meadow of parking, and they, each one of the two, wore yellow hats, so each to each would know that the other was not lying.

They put their heads together with tape, they put them together with parking string, and if one of them thought, the other carried that thought like a rescue blanket, onwards, onwards, onwards and further. There was so much to think and so much to drink, but now they were together, and then they noticed the band conductor.

“I am not a band conductor,” says the one and truly Cyclops. He stands by their small assembly for he must ask them a question.

“I have questions and one story, and I have to tell it to you,” and he stands there still as Cyclops, still as earthquake, slow as glue.

“I see starlet Dingy Bahsome, I see each and every evening, I see her televised migration from one number to another. I see her altogether, I see each part of her in close up, but what I want especially is to be, to be myself, myself to be, is to be all of her.”

Rack and Zack rack and zack their Orange Drink Brain Trust brains for two, for fifty-seven standard counties, and for all the others without boundaries.

They think like a polecat they think like a spine, they think like reflection, they think like slow wine. They think like a small hat, they think like a big, they think like a skylark, and like porky pig. They think like a neuron, they think like a head, they think with their grayness, they think what you said. They think right on target, they think like a piss, they tell it to Cyclops - don’t mess with a miss.

“We like you like you are today, we like you in your Cyclops way, we like you just the way you are – if you like us, you won’t go far.”

Rack and Zack tell Cyclops so, but Cyclops can see more with his one eye than they with all their four, and he doesn’t really trust them, and so he goes to the next house, and who there, while Rack and Zack ride the fivecycle away. They are going back to exactly where they came from, which is here, which is this place.