Jane Stuart

H O W A R D and the Night Crawlers

Howard who had retained his interest in night was back again with little on his mind, he said, except quashing those cabbages and seeing how the basement worked, he added. The Dragon Lady told him there was no basement but it was difficult to convince Howard of anything, especially when you were standing several feet away from him in brick boots or yelling through the window and he was not listening.

Howard had skates and this time he was wearing a parachute. He insisted that it helped him "blast through." He told the Dragon Lady that he was dropping in from the sky above but she told him, or at least said to herself, that he was not dropping anything--least of all walnuts on her mind. Howard was a pest and somewhat inflammatory.

He said it was his toes that were inflamed and perhaps, but only that, the condition of his mind. His thinking habits had been somewhat soused by the drink of doves which was "angel juice and all that," meaning Coca Cola lightly spiked with rum and that was the real thing!

It was difficult to tell WHAT Howard meant and WHY he was bothering everyone. The Dragon Lady who had rolled her hair had nothing to offer him and nothing to return although Howard seemed to think she had stolen his teddybear and also swiped his childhood. Again, she did not even know Howard but this did not deter him.

Perhaps he had only found her name once again in the telephone book and perhaps it had been passed along to him by some good-meaning person who did not want him hanging around HER anymore. Howard was just one of those one-of-a-kind pests who flaked the door, offered to run out for lunch, and was always itching the sandwiches while anxiously waiting to see who was writing WHOM in the hopes of getting free stamps and maybe even a self-addressed envelope so he could return the same to Bugaloo Station. He said that George Raft, an old movie star, had done this many years ago. Aided by Satchmo, he added.

The Dragon Lady's problems with Howard--there weren't any--began about six years ago when he dropped in from heaven and Skyward City where it was at, he said, and had commenced, he swore, but no one was listening. Howard also knew how to make silver and followed the D.L. around rat-trapping all day while poking for quarters and looking for lost teddybears. But the Dragon Lady was not listening, she said and told him with a belch of smoke that then circled her automobile. She now had two flat tires, she thought--Howard had a problem with pins and needles.

Although the world was not full of hallucinatory figures, Howard thought he was one and proclaimed this while trying to buy and purchase these hallucinatory figures at the store. He was also a relative and told everyone who would listen that he was the Dragon Lady's longlost brother--or brother-in-law. He did not seem to understand that she, his friend, did not have a brother or even brother-in-law although she had politely told him, and the walnuts he carried in his pocketbook, that if she did he would not be either one. Howard did not understand but insisted upon this charade and then began reading her--the Dragon Lady's--mail.

How did Howard do this? He said he was first at the letterbox. It did not bother him at all that the Dragon Lady, or D.L.'s, letters were not addressed to him because, he said, whoever sent "it" wanted someone to read "it" and also he was first, he insisted, in a world of gocarts made of apologies and, most of all, come firsts, firsts served.

SHE did not understand his thinking but that did not deter our man HOWARD who seemed to think the universe was his to share. He began telling other people such as Bugs Bunny, a close friend, that he and the Walrus knew HER. He never explained who the Walrus was and didn't care much either but this was a way, he said, of UNDERSTANDING FRIENDSHIP.

Willard, who really had been a friend of Howard once-upon-a-time, had made it a rule not to associate with the Walrus and so--was gone! Howard knew that Willard did not like Bugs Bunny, either, so he kept talking about him and parking Two Shoes, his spacemobile, outside the Dragon Lady's window-in-law and barking like a dog all night. Perhaps this was intended to wake "her" but "she" only turned the radio up and pretended not to know what was going on OUT THERE because Howard would get up and do a little dance when he felt like it.

The neighbors said he wore such strange clothes! too. The Dragon Lady assured "them" that she did not KNOW Howard but they told her, anyway, that he was into body suits and had such a nice and unusual orange one and a little hat covered with cherries to gain the attention of anyone who was looking or listening. If he pressed Cherry Number 1, he sang. If he pinched Cherry Number 2, he howled a little louder. He was not exactly into Cherry Number 3 but--he said--was trying.

Howard discovered opera. He brought with him his record player, a portable windup, for background. He wound it up and let 'er go, singing Verdi and Puccino in a warbledown chorus which would have set even the birds to hanging upside down from their mysterious perches near the moon but Howard, who had discovered the moon again, was up in those trees and limoge-ing, he said, in an attempt to REPLICATE a painted sculpture.

"To your health," he said to anyone passing by while opening some bubbly and crooning on.

The Dragon Lady did not think she could ever get rid of Howard! What he wanted was still beyond her because there was no basement to the house and she did not cook cabbage. Howard, though, insisted on such nonsense as he would be "yours truly"--he had to belong to someone. Although this yours truly business was not a marriage proposal, it was not something, he said and truly believed, that could be denied.

Howard did not believe in rejection; he did not even come close to understanding that word. It was a b-i-g word that was not in his vocabulary, he told everyone and assured the large Bird that was listening.

But howard found his perch and landed back on Saturn according to a postcard written by someone else, probably Willard. He then sent the D.L. a shoe and suggested she fill it! but that was the last she ever heard of him. Finally she supposed, while watering her own flowers, that he was strutting in a new pair.

Everything was fine. The world was making its own progress until one day a strange car parked itself in front of the house. It was a yellow car. It looked a little wobbly and was definately handmade. Someone had painted a huge smile on the front and there was Howard emerging from the roof that he said he had opened with a can opener. He was holding a telescope and spotting locations, through his loudspeaker, for a new universe.

Someone called the Pizza Man who came and took him away again.