2011 Le Bel Homme (The Plan) Excerpt – John The Hay Driver

(john the hay driver)

AND so any one day was quite often the same as the next for John the Hay Driver, until, on a not particularly unique day, as John the Hay Driver was making his bumpy way through the dark green forest, one of his artificial rubber wheels popped with a compressor malfunction, and it began to rain. John the Hay Driver’s hover-cart slowly swiveled in a pitiful little circle, whizzing and burring, and came to rest in the dirt, soon made mud by the soft, pelting rain. Old John looked up, and a tiny silver droplet went plunk (!) in his eye. As it was already evening and twilight time, it soon grew dark and cold, and still Old John the Hay Driver sat there, on his broken cart, not knowing what to do. Finally, having become very tired and not a just little bit wet, John the Hay Driver jumped up out of his lovely silver hover-cart, and he began to push and pull on it as hard as he could. He found out soon that the soft and silvery rain had turned the ancient asphalt into a thick black mud, and his cart was completely stuck in it, and one by one his collection of golden hay pieces were falling into the dark, colorless and wet earth. It was horrible!

“THIS is horrible, most horrible!” cried John the Hay Driver, though none of the comfortably robed shiny denizens of the average richest suburb in the average shiniest city were there to hear him.

AND Old John the Hay Driver pulled on his silvery but quickly dulling hover-cart until his arm-joints were close to breaking, yet still it would not budge. It would not budge darn it, thought John the Hay Driver. Soon, it was near midnight, the moon was high in the heavens, and the creatures of the lonely night began to creep out into their more textural and scented world. Came the chirping tree frogs, came the singing crickets, came the gliding winged squirrels, came the perfumed skunks, came the clever raccoons, came the flowering moths, came the adorable sharp-clawed bats, came the mockingbirds channeling all spirits of song and came the most knowing and wisest of owls. Old John the Hay Driver saw these living things naught, but he began to hear the evidences of their happy routines over the soft pattering of the rain and the sounds of mud sloshing about his boots as he pulled and pushed, to no avail. Soon, Old John was so distraught; he began to speak to himself.

“I’M John the Hay Driver, I’m John the Hay Driver, and won’t you please help me?” he muttered, quite similar to what he was so used to saying under more pleasant circumstances.

IT made him feel better now to remember the sweet and sparkling suburbs and their shimmering titanium knobbed doors, and pearly white smiles. Most of the animals of night assumed this new sound to be just another of the myriad mysteries of the dark green forest, but the wisest Owl knew different, and he responded in kind.

“Hoo, hoo, who are you?” said the owl.

“I’m John the Hay Driver, and I’m stuck in the mud!” cried John, “Won’t someone please come and help me out?”

But the owl, although wise, knew not what John meant, so he repeated “Hoo, hoo, who are you?”