The last time we left the Ukrainian Diaspora Zebra, named Zamazda, many episodes back, at precisely this time three months ago, he had been waddling his fat short stout ugly ass covered in a peculiar stripe along a yellow-bricked road winding through endless Cossack steppe, where the voice of reason is deafened by a desolate wind.
Not heeding the counsel of his mother, but inflamed with harebrained arrogance and destructive ambition to seek and make his fortune at the leading English-language newspaper known as the Kyiv Poster in the big city that shares that paper’s first name, Zebra was stopped in his tracks on that fateful day, mesmerized by the Rodent (aka The Ferret), which was crouching at the roadside fixing its bike, broken from backpedaling, as the Rodent admitted, despite himself.
As time lapsed, Zebra’s boundless fat-assed vanity became increasingly spellbound by the Rodent’s equivocating craft, until it brought us to this final hallucinatory passage of Zebra’s first seduction episode, filed by Dirk Dickerson back in March, which read thusly:
“The smoke from the Rodent’s sissy cigarette curls up into the air of the late afternoon as he paces back and forth, jabbering hectically on a mobile phone along the roadside. The burnt orange sun is now setting over the dark-tilled Diasporan fields. The azure sky has faded to blue gray. Zebra Zamazda is feeling mildly sick… and sneaky… and stupid.”
From Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice, unbeknownst to Zebra, he has been held in trance by The Ferret, and is only now coming out of paralysis, which was hypnotically induced by the irresistible power of The Ferret’s lies, artfully interspersed with his rhythmic and incantational “heh, heh, heh-heh-hehs…”
It is here that Jack Step picks up the story.
Oh, oh, hey, what is that, who’s back there, Zebra says slowly, shaking his fat striped Zebra head lumberingly, straining his neck around to try to see what’s going on behind him.
HEH HUH HEH HUH HEH HUH HEH HUH…
Hey, what are you doing to my behind? Aren’t you The Ferret?
HEH HUH HEH HUH HEH HUH HEH… HEH-HEH-HEH… Heh, heh, dude, heh-heh-heh, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Well, Rodent, I’m almost certain someone called you The Ferret, and I was warned – I forget by whom – against listening to you. It may have even been my poor, sweet mother.
Heh-heh, dude, you shouldn’t go saying things about your own mother. Heh, heh, heh-heh-heh… HEH HUH HEH HUH…
Heeeeey!!! I think maybe you should stop that, Mr. Ferret…
Dude, dude, heh, don’t go spreading rumors… HEH HUH HEH HUH…
Oh, I’m not spreading rumors, but it’s awfully hot – much hotter and drier than I remember when I first set out on this yellow-bricked road, and I seem to remember the day was ending and you were talking away on your phone, walking back and forth next to your broken bike, all hunched over smoking a sissy cigarette and I suddenly started to feel strange… and stupid… and… and then I don’t remember what happened. Oh, but just before that, someone drove by in a car, kicking up the dirt something awful, and called you The Ferret!
HEH HUH… No, no, dude, dude, dude… don’t listen to them. I’m telling you, heh, it’s not in your best interests. Now hold still… HEH, HUH, HEH…
Just then, the car that drove by three months earlier going in one direction – assumedly toward the ancient Eastern Slavic capital of Kyiv, seat of the famous Kyiv Poster all-English newspaper (and Internet version paywall for its long-suffering readers) – drove by going the other way, The Half Guinea, mostly from Kyiv Unedited’s Checkout section, where he’d been keeping a low profile of late, thrust his V-shaped teeth out the window, yelling while shaking his fist, “Fucking Ferret!”
No sooner had that car zoomed by, another one carrying The Hunched Cornish followed hot on its tail. “God damn Ferret!”
But by now, Zebra was oblivious.
Hey, Mr. Rodent, he says, that feels pretty good.
Heh-heh, I don’t know what you’re talking about. HEH HUH…
Is that something I should know how to do once I get to the Kyiv Poster?
HUH HEH HUH… Ah, no, ah, yeah, ah, I don’t know, yeah, maybe, yeah, heh, except there, it’ll be a lot simpler. But don’t tell anybody I told you so. Heh-heh… HEH HUH HEH HUH…
Oh? And why is that, Rodent?
Heh-heh… The chief editor there – who’s job you’re going to take over (if you do everything just like I tell you – but not say I told you so) almost immediately after he hires you (in good faith no less, heh-heh-heh) – is so gullible, good-natured and naïve, he’s going to take one look at your stupid Zebra face and say to himself that he’s got himself one honest hard-working reliable loyal Zebra who’s never going to change his stripes and always give him the good editing support he so desperately needs. Heh-heh. With a chief editor like that, you can do anything behind his back, and he won’t know it until it’s too late!
They both laugh: Heh, heh, heh-heh-heh, ha ha, ho, ho, ho, ho, ha ha heh-heh-heh-heh…
Just then, Zebra spots Pony Boy, who looks like a near Diaspora relation, except without the stripes, plodding through the field of tall steppe grass one side of the yellow-bricked road, slowly and ponderously lolling his lowered head this way and that with a long detector-like pole clenched between his teeth.
I know him, says Zebra angrily. That’s Pony Boy, isn’t it, Mr. Rodent? Zebra becomes agitated, and furiously indignant, begins to shake all over.
Hold still – heh, heh, heh-heh-heh – I’m not finished yet…
Hey, Pony Boy, Zebra asks, highly annoyed and increasingly aggressive. What are you doing here?
Oh, I’ve just decided to take a long trot under the merciless noonday sun and in the choking dry dust-filled air away from the Kyiv Poster, back there in the big city where I work, making for myself a fruitful and promising English-language newsman career, to comb these ancient Cossack fields with my special news finder – right here in my mouth – to see if I can uncover some leads! Pony Boy neighs, quite self-satisfied with his uncharacteristic spunk, ingenuity and initiative, but then lifts his head in silent dignity, remembering that he is not only Ukrainian Diaspora, but an American.
No, I don’t like him at all, Zebra says, and in one explosive move, surprising for a zebra so fat and low to the ground, blows The Ferret right out of his ass…
Hey, you can’t do that to me – heh-heh-heh… I wasn’t finished yet!!! Heh, heh, heh, heeeeehh…!!!
…and with gritted zebra teeth leaps on and begins to stomp all over Pony Boy.
I don’t like you, I don’t like you, I don’t like you…
Ow, ouch, ooow, you’re hurting me, stop that, stop it, ooch, ouch ow ow, you just broke my news finder, ouch ow ow ow ooooowww…!!!
Filed by Jack Step, June 20, 2013