Tom Robbins - Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Freddie, meanwhile, pleads, whines, and threatens. Until Zumba swings a machete a few inches from his nose. Then he sings and plays. Zumba grins contentedly. Brutha joins in on the bongos. This routine is repeated throughout the day.

Hinkley Jr.’s rescue party sweats and pants up the steep jungle road. A bit of bravado has drained from its leader.

The strange blue light has completely enveloped Mama Lo’s shack. Newton writhes on a straw mat on the floor. His eyes are closed. He groans, he writhes.

Several feet of snow blankets Minneapolis. As a Freddie Manhattan album plays on the stereo, a melancholy Heidi stares out the window. In the distance, a small figure hops across the snowy suburban landscape. As it nears, we see the figure is Newton. He is bound with rope, as if to a mast, to a giant chicken leg. No chicken, just the leg. The leg hops through the snow, toward the house. In their crib, the twins begin to cry. Heidi picks them up, wraps them well, and carries them outside. As they stand in the snow, the chicken leg hops around them. Newton blows kisses at the three of them. The twins goo and smile. Heidi mouths halfhearted kisses at Newton. Then, the chicken leg carries him off into the distance. He disappears beyond the pale horizon.

At kiosks all over America, the Weekly World Enquirer reveals the news of Freddie’s abduction. Network TV picks it up. The word “terrorists” is used. Dan Rather, a bit bemused, announces that tabloid publisher Desmond Hinkley Jr. is leading a rescue party in the St. Ignatz interior.

Indeed he is. But not without difficulty. Hinkley Jr. and Lionel, dirty, hot, and tired, look at one another. They agree they must be lost.

Things are quiet at the clearing. Freddie plucks gently at the silly guitar, Brutha beats the bongos ever so softly. Zumba is speaking philosophically. White men, black men seem like twins, he says. Fraternal twins. They look alike, in some ways, but there are many differences. Like the biblical twins, Jacob and Esau, they are separated by inequalities, destined to live apart.

While Zumba speaks, Freighter drives up in the dune buggy. He has been to the recording studio and stolen Freddie’s personal guitar. “My ax!” exclaims Freddie. He hurls the cheap guitar to the ground and embraces his beloved instrument. Zumba ignores all this. He continues his monologue. The twin souls of black and white, rich and poor, socialist and capitalist, can never be joined, Zumba says. He pauses. “Except, maybe, by music.”

Mama Lo is singing to Newton. All the while, she is swinging before his glazed eyes a corkscrew on the end of a string. Back and forth, pendulum-like. Newton’s gaze moves along the spiral of the corkscrew, following it down, down, down…

With Newton still bound to it, the giant chicken leg hops up the slope of the first volcano. It hops over the edge and down into the crater. Inside the volcano, the music is very loud. Upon a ledge, the Goddess is standing. She is resplendent, beautiful, both funky and ethereal. In her hands are a pair of dice. The Goddess shakes the dice and throws them. The dice are normal size when they leave her hand, but when they hit the volcano floor, they are huge. One large die lands at the foot of the chicken leg. Newton looks down upon it, sees it is a 2. The second die rolls to a stop beside it. This one is a 3.

As Newton stares, the two spots on the first die are replaced with the faces of his twin boys. He turns to the second die, whose three spots are just changing into the faces of three racially mixed baby girls. Each has a different-colored ribbon in her hair. The three primary colors.

Suddenly, the chicken leg hops into an underground passage. As it moves along the lava corridor (the primordial soup is bubbling, spattering Newton; it is red and looks suspiciously like barbecue sauce), we cut to an aerial view of the twin volcanoes. There is a roar, and a puff of smoke and steam erupts from the second volcano. Out of it pops Newton aboard the chicken leg, only now it is a cooked drumstick, dripping barbecue sauce. Newton gets a spectacular view of the island and its twin volcanic peaks.

In front of the shrine, Newton’s head snaps. He “comes to.” With a bewildered expression, he looks at Mama Lo. His attention is directed to the shrine. Where the snowflake picture was is now the face of the Goddess. The Goddess smiles and speaks, directly to Newton. “The dice are always rolling,” is what she says.

As Newton turns to Mama Lo, as if to speak, the shack door is smashed, and in bursts Hinkley Jr. and his posse. “You’re saved!” Hinkley Jr. yells to Newton. To Mama Lo he shouts, “No false moves! In the name of the Weekly World Enquirer and free men everywhere, you’re under arrest!”

A violent tropical thunderstorm has moved in over the clearing. Taking refuge from the downpour, Zumba, Brutha, Leroyette, and Freddie (unchained) are under Zumba’s shack, relaxing and smoking spliffs. Freighter, however, has climbed to the top of his antenna tower, where he is wiring Freddie’s expensive and adored guitar to the tip. When Freddie sees this, he runs out into the storm, jumping up and down and screaming. A distraught Cookie stands in the rain, yelling at Freighter to come down. “I got to beat him,” growls Freighter. “Honey, we is going to beat him,” says Cookie, rubbing her belly.

A bolt of lightning strikes Zumba’s tower. It sparks across the clearing, joining, momentarily, the twin towers with an electric arc. Freighter receives a jolt that knocks him off of his lofty perch.

In Minneapolis, Heidi is watching TV. The newscaster says that Freddie fans are gathering in Miami, keeping a vigil. Heidi says to the twins, “I wish we’d gone to Miami with your weird old daddy.”

When Hinkley Jr.’s party, including Newton, arrives at the clearing, the rain has just stopped. Unconscious, Freighter lies on the wet ground. Zumba and Freddie are working over him. Newton offers to drive to the civilized part of the island and fetch a doctor. He speeds away in the dune buggy. At one point, he can make out in the distance the waterfall and Mama Lo’s shack. He slows down and almost stops, but drives on.

A few days later, a Lear jet lands in Miami and Freddie Manhattan deplanes. The media is there in full force, as well as several hundred cheering fans. Some fans are carrying a huge banner, reading: WELCOME HOME FREDDIE! Among the fans is Heidi. She lays the twins on a baggage cart and moves in to touch Freddie. There is instantly something between them. Freddie looks her over and we can virtually hear the chemical crackle.

Newton, who has deplaned after Freddie (and after Hinkley Jr., now monopolizing the media), picks up the twins and walks slowly away with them. Heidi glances over, sees this, hesitates, then moves back into Freddie’s arms.

Nearly a year passes. It is early winter in Minneapolis. Newton drives through the snow to a day care center, where he deposits the twins. He then drives on to work. At the museum, a letter awaits him. It bears a St. Ignatz postmark. On the way to his station, he tears it open. He removes two photos. Walking, he looks at the first. It’s a picture of Zumba and Leroyette. They have a baby boy.

As Newton lectures, we see the second photo, which he has just taped to his projector. Cookie and Freighter (Freighter has a wooden leg now, and is making a “V” for Victory sign) are holding triplets: three little racially mixed girls, each with a different colored bow in her hair.

“Of all the trillions and trillions of snowflakes that have fallen upon the Earth, scientists claim no two…”

Newton breaks off. He stares at the photo of his triplets. As he projects fresh snowflakes onto a screen, he takes up again. “…scientists claim no two have ever been alike. However, folks, as we know, the dice are always rolling.” Expectantly, he turns to examine the screen.