Rumours from the Pit

By Carlton Louis Wyant

I answered the knock at the door to find a young fresh-faced chap in a pristine black suit. A slim laptop computer hung from his hand like a briefcase. He had 'Government' written all over him.

In the background I saw the regulation unmarked van, stealth-black, straight from the fourth level laboratory of Amadeus Khan.

"Inland Revenue," he said. "The Department sent me."

Outwardly I kept calm , but inside I felt the old thrill, and with a deft move I grabbed my pitchfork from behind the door and nailed him to a veranda post with a swift and powerful jab. Don't worry; he didn't suffer much.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris NZ
• Release date: Mar 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781543496529

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Copyright © 2021 by Carlton Louis Wyant.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/08/2021

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814117

This one’s for Joan, my bossy big sister, who’s always been there

for me, even though the whole Pacific Ocean keeps us apart.

A true blue broad if there ever was one.

MARCH 9, 2001 - New Zealand

CONTENTS

PART I: TRUE LIES

The Fairytale Life Of Happy Valley

The Heavier Side Of Heaviness

Doing Good Deeds

Cultural Safety : The Redskins Versus The Krauts

My Essay

Jimmy Brown And The Lemonade Stand

Apropos Of Everything - A Love Letter

The Epistles

John Sharper’s Blues

A Case Of Identity

Dr. Jeckle And Mrs Mcpherson

Movie Review—DEUCE BIGALOW (M)

Envy

The Nz Flag

Tv Ads

Intersection

Demons, Drought, And Bullfeathers

The Skeptical Hairdresser

Faith Healing

Believe Or Die

The End Is Nigh... Again

Christians

You Call This Poverty?

At The Dentist

The Tvvizel Zone

Napier

A Bender

The Rise And Fall Of Misanthropy In Morningside

Whangamania - Is There A Cure?

The Blind Spot

The Safety Menace

The Skytower

Female Immunity

Wolf In Wolf’s Clothing

The Day Of The Special Voter

Virtual Music, Virtual Drugs, Virtual News

Between A Baroque And A Hard Place

To Swing’s The Thing

Letter To Craig

Roswell

Daughters With Attitude

Lill, Lily, Lilian

Bewitched Again

Lily

Letter To Sts

Ralph Hotere’s Daughter’s Horse

Mules

Manual Typewriters - Why?

How I Became A Carpenter

PART II: GENERAL MADNESS

Events That The Newshawk Himself Could Not Understand

Theologians At Play

Fitsimmons And The Newspaper Deliveries

Fun On The Hotline

The Wyscope

Goldfish: Friendly Housepets, Or Intergalactic Mind Leeches?

Movie — Big Daddy

Movie Review—THE SKULLS

The City Of Purity

Taking The Homo Menace Seriously

Caution: Reporters At Work.

The Wyant Heavy-Weight Motor

Letter To Barry(1)

Letter To Barry(2)

House And Garden

Nerds Inc.

The Bean Incident

The Magnum Method

Just One Of Those Nights

PART I

TRUE LIES

THE FAIRYTALE LIFE

OF HAPPY VALLEY

(Report, 1997)

I answered the knock at the door to find a young fresh-faced chap in a pristine black suit. A slim laptop computer hung from his hand like a briefcase. He had ‘Government’ written all over him.

In the background I saw the regulation unmarked van, stealth-black, straight from the fourth level laboratory of Amadeus Khan.

Inland Revenue, he said. The Department sent me.

Outwardly I kept calm, but inside I felt the old thrill, and with a deft move I grabbed my pitchfork from behind the door and nailed him to a veranda post with a swift and powerful jab. Don’t worry; he didn’t suffer much.

Nearby a neighbour stuck her head out the window and yelled, what the devil’s going on over there CL?

It was Mrs McPherson, a solid patriot and presbyterian.

I shrugged a dismissive shrug. Taxman, I said. -

Mrs McPherson waved back with a kindly smile. OK then, she yelled, but if you see any of these new-fangled charismatic fundamentalists send them over here and I’ll take them out with the 12 gauge.

No worries, I said.

You’d like our neighbourhood. Nice lawns, sturdy high-gabled houses with picket fences edged with tulips and crocuses, tasteful but unpretentious cars parked in the cobblestone driveways.

What sets Happy Valley apart from other communities, however, is that we believe in keeping a firm grip on our various public servants.

For instance, a couple of years ago local government tried to foist a rates increase on us, a grotesque and intolerable burden that worried us sorely.

At first we wrote letters, saying please, please don’t increase our taxes, but they were disregarded.

We then sent an emissary, the venerable Hodsworthy, who spoke earnestly on our behalf, but alas, his words fell on the ears of a donkey.

Indeed, the clerk in charge told Hodsworthy that if he wanted to take it further he would have to fill out an application for a permit to protest, at a cost of $2000 for the application and $50 for the permit.

We were musing over this problem with considerable solemnity, when Erasmus Brightside up and strides out the door, climbs to the roof of his house with a portable missile launcher, and blows the whole city council to smithereens.

Sadly, survivors were found among the rubble, but between the phosphorous burns and smoke inhalation they were now quite agreeable on the rates question.

Anyway, I had this dead IRD body to get rid of. I thought of just leaving him there for others to see, but it was messy, so I tossed him in his van and drove out to Deadman’s Leap and rolled it over the edge into the sea, wherein it sank and disappeared.

I was prepared for a long walk home, but luck was with me and I got a lift with Joe Bloggs, a fine family man, who had been up in the hills burning a heap of metre maid carcasses.

We at Happy Valley don’t take kindly to permits. Indeed, just the other day a couple of lads with clip-boards came to harass Mrs. Bloom, a poor 80- year-old for building a chicken coop without a permit.

She managed to kill one of them with a spade, but the other made a break for the woods and headed for the main road. But we set the dogs on him and....well, perhaps we shouldn’t dwell on it.

We chuckle about it now, of course....but still, when the midnight wind moans through the trees and the moon rides low in the heavens, we wonder how long we can hold out; how long we can keep the cursed mitts of The Commanders off our property and out of our lives.

But in the meantime we try to be of good cheer. We have done our best. What more can one ask of himself?

COPY ENDS.

THE HEAVIER SIDE OF HEAVINESS

(Whangarei Report — 2000)

It was a normal day here at the Wyant Anvil And Engine Block Storage Company.

My beloved secretary, Miss September, a stacked blonde in a sprayed-on panther suit, was working on the accounts; Tom Hunk, my right-hand man, was cleaning up an engine block with a turpsy rag; and I was out back having my mid-morning dope and booze break.

Life, I mused, doesn’t get much better than this.

Ten minutes later, however, this peaceful and industrious scene was shot down the tubes like a sack of fish guts when a slimy little federal agent walked in, plonked a massive two-ring binder on the counter, and handed me his card.

Moa Moamoa, it said. Inspector for the Dept. of Standardized Reality. I was wondering bow someone as white as a fish belly could have a name like Moa Moamoa, when he spoke up.

We all have maori names, he said, to indicate solidarity with the suffering minorities so ruthlessly crushed under the heels of the white fascist pigs.

&*+k you, I said.

He smiled a slimy little federal smile. Your crimes against humanity are grievous, he said. Sexism. Racism. Beautifulism. Do you really want to add the use of illegal language to the list?

So while we stood around in various states of boiling rage and flabbergastedness Moa Moamoa told me about all the laws I’d been breaking, how I could redeem myself, and what would happen if I didn’t.

First of all, all my employees were white. Second, all my employees were beautiful. And third, I was guilty of sexist stereotyping, forcing the male to lug anvils around and assigning the female to office work.

Disgusting, muttered Moa Moamoa.

According to Section 4,978 B of The Manifesto, he said, the correct staff for a business such as mine would be a maori lesbian with a club foot, an old fat white dyslexic woman, and a blind mexican.

Miz September, said Moa Moamoa; if you are afraid to speak freely in front of this ruthless tyrant you can always come to headquarters and make an official statement, expressing the cruel exploitation and stereotyping that you have been subjected to.

Listen up runt, said Miss September. First of all, don’t call me Miz, Mizter. Second of all, men don’t exploit me; I exploit THEM. I’ll have you know that I’ve made a lot of money exploiting men.

You tell ‘em Miss September, I said.

Tom Hunk piped up. I don’t really want to do office work CL, he said. I don’t understand office work.

Don’t worry Tom, I said. No one’s going to make you do office work.

You poor downtrodden workers, said Moa Moamoa. So thoroughly has this fiend brainwashed you that you actually believe you are capable of independent thought.

But we will help you, he continued. Mr Hunk, you WILL do office work. Miz September, you WILL clean engine blocks. And Mr Wyant, you will be fined $50,000 and sentenced to three years in a Normalization Camp. We will save you. We will save you from your minds. THE STATE IS SOVEREIGN!

At this moment came a roaring, rushing, sound, and then we saw water creeping over the land, inwards and upwards, pouring and pouring, like the Red Sea closing in.

In a sudden intuitive flash I saw what was happening. The whole country was sinking under the weight of government departments.

Moving quickly I clubbed the agent to death and inflated him with an air-compressor, and when the waters closed in we used him for a float.

Science doesn’t fully understand what happened next, but the general hunch is that the government departments proved so void of human substance that they dissolved and washed away, and the land mass, relieved of its oppressive burden, resurfaced.

Anyway, after wiping the seaweed off my shoulders and disentangling a crayfish from Miss September’s hair, I checked my watch. It was one o’clock in the afternoon.

Team, I said; there is no God but God and Jim Beam is his messenger. Let’s party.

COPY ENDS.

DOING GOOD DEEDS

(Whangarei Report Aug 3 — 00)

One day Slasher and I decided there wasn’t enough brightness and light in the world so we set forth in the city to do good deeds.

We looked-good, but then, we always do. Slasher, a big Nordic guy with long blonde hair slicked straight back into a ponytail, wore his Harley leathers and black shades; and I wore my usual black shoes, black Levi’s, black shirt, black jacket, and black shades. By God., if anyone could bring brightness and light into the world it was us.

Presently we came upon a blessed old lady, timid and undecided about crossing the busy street. So we went and offered out assistance.

She seemed a little shy at first, so Slasher took hold of her arm to add some extra encouragement and propulsion, at which point she became SO shy that she clung onto the lamp post with her other arm and began to kick up a heck of a ruckus.

I tried to pry her arm loose from the lamp post, but she was a tough little blighter. One of those, wirey, stringy types, with a loud shrill voice.

In fact so loud and shrill was her voice that I finally tried to gag her with a bandana, but she was too quick for me, and in the meantime she bit my thumb and kicked Slasher in the privates. Now that’s gratitude for you.

For a while there I thought it was a lost cause. But finally Slasher let go of her arm and somehow managed to get a rope around her ankle. Then I came around and took the rope, and Slasher, who’s bigger than me, went back to pry her wizened little mitts off the lamp post.

We wrestled the thankless old bat a third of the way across the street when the signals changed and a million tons of rush-hour traffic came roaring towards us, so we dragged her back to the curb.

It was a nuisance, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because as we were dragging her back an articulated petrol tanker swerved out of the way and barrelled diagonally across the intersection and plowed into the Bank of New Zealand and exploded, which brought the traffic to a standstill and gave us free reign to get the cursed weasel across the street.

Or so we thought.

By now the old lady was making such a godawful amount of racket that bystanders began to move in, as if to hijack our good deed and take her across the street themselves and rob us of all credit.

Thinking and moving swiftly Slasher slapped a pair of handcuffs on the old lady, took the cuffed hands in his left and drew a 44 magnum semi with his right, keeping the troublemakers at bay.

By now Slasher had that cold glint of unyielding determination in his eye that I had seen many times before. In the mines of Australia; the jungles of Malay; Cathedral Square on Saturday night. Yes, I knew that look, and I now knew that we really would get that old lady across the street.

It was a beautiful and touching scene.

In the background half a block of buildings went up in flames as dazed panic-stricken survivors ran screaming and yelling, some so thoroughly caught up in the gaiety of the occasion that they themselves were on fire.

Out on the crosswalk Slasher and I slowly escorted the old lady across the street, Slasher keeping a firm grip on her cuffs with one hand and deftly pivoting this way and that with the 44 to keep the crowds back, while I kept hold of the rope on her ankle, because by this point she was beginning to get downright bad-tempered, God knows why, after all the trouble we’d gone to. But that’s people for you — totally irrational.

But at last Hell’s grandmother was delivered. And can you believe it? She scurried away without a word of thanks. I tell you, had we been anything less than saints it might have weakened our faith in humanity.

Then we came up with an idea for good deeds that could well blossom into a veritable goldmine of brightness and light — getting people in wheelchairs up escalators!

We haven’t tried it yet, but as soon as we finish these last fifteen jugs of beer we will. And seriously, if we aren’t made official Vaisnava sadhus for this one, well, there’s something haywire in the zodiac.

COPY ENDS.

CULTURAL SAFETY : THE

REDSKINS VERSUS THE KRAUTS

(NZ Skeptic - 1995)