Demon Box

W: Change roles, talk back to the snake.

B: Then why do you crawl on me, you snake?

W: Change back, keep it going.

B: Because you don’t matter. You’re not important.

–I am important!

–Oh, yeah? Who says?

–Everybody says. I’m important to the community. (Laughs, resumes the affected voice.) Captain Bill the firefighter. Hot stuff.

W: (taking over snake’s voice): Oh, yeah? Then why is your foot so cold? (laughter)

B: Because it’s so far from my head, (more laughter) But I see what you’re getting at, Doctor; my foot is important, of course. It’s all me—

W: Have the snake say it.

B: Huh? A foot is important.

W: Now change roles and give Mr. Snake some recognition. Is he not important?

B: I suppose you are important, Mr. Snake, somewhere on Nature’s Great Ladder. You control pests, mice and insects and… lesser creatures.

W: Have the snake return this compliment to Captain Bill.

B: You’re important too, Captain Bill. I recognize that.

W: How do you recognize Captain Bill’s importance?

B: I … well, because you told me to.

W: Is that all? Doesn’t Captain Bill also control lesser creatures from up on the big ladder?

B: Somebody has to tell them what to do down there.

W: Down there?

B: At the pumps, crawling around in the confusion… the hoses and smoke and stuff.

W: I see. And how do these lesser creatures recognize you through all this smoke and confusion, Captain Bill, to do what you tell them?

B: By my—by the helmet. The whole outfit. They issue the captain a special uniform with hi-viz striping on the jacket and boots. Sharp! And on the helmet there’s this insignia of a shield, you see—

W: There it is, people! Do you see? That same armor he marched onstage with—shield, helmet, boots—the complete fascist wardrobe! Mr. Snake, Captain Bill needs to shed his skin, don’t you think? Tell him how one sheds a skin.

B: Well, I… you… grow. The skin gets tighter and tighter, until it gets so tight it splits along the back. Then you crawl out. It hurts. It hurts but it must be done if one is to—wait! I get it! If one is to grow! I see what you mean, Doctor. Grow out of my armor even if it hurts? Okay, I can stand a little pain if I have to.

W: Who can stand a little pain?

B: Bill can! I’m strong enough, I believe, to endure being humbled a little. I’ve always maintained that if one has a truly strong “Self” that one can—

W: Ah-ah-ah! Never gossip about someone who isn’t present, especially when it is yourself. Also, when you write the word “self” you would do better to spell it with a lower-case s. The capital S went out with such myths as perpetual motion. And lastly, Bill, one thing more. What, if you would please tell us, is so important over there—

(lifting a finger to point out the vague place in the air where Bill has fixed his thoughtful gaze)

–that keeps you from looking here?

(bringing the finger back to touch himself beneath an eye, razor-blade blue, tugging the cheek until the orb seems to lean down from his face like some incorruptible old magistrate leaning from his sacrosanct bench)

B: Sorry.

W: Are you back? Good. Can you not feel the difference? The tingling? Yah? What you are feeling is the Thou of Martin Buber, the Tao of Chung Tzu. When you sneak away like that you are divided, like Kierkegaard’s “Double Minded Man” or the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man.” You are noplace, nothing, of absolutely no importance, whatever uniform you wear, and don’t attempt to give me a lot of community-spirited elephant shit otherwise. Now, out of the chair. Your time is up.

Woofner’s tone was considered by many colleagues to be too sarcastic, too cutting. After class, in the tub with his advanced pupils, he went way past cutting. In these hunts for submerged blubber, he wielded scorn like a harpoon, sarcasm like a filleting knife.

“So?” The old man had slid deeper beneath the girl and the water, clear to his mocking lower lip. “Der Kinder seem to be fascinated by this law of bottled dynamics?” His sharp look cut from face to face, but I felt the point was aimed at me. “Then you will probably be equally fascinated by the little imp that inhabits that vessel—Maxwell’s Demon. Excuse me, dear—?”

He dumped the court recorder up from his lap. When she surfaced, gasping and coughing, he gave her a fatherly pat.

“—hand me my trousers if you would be so kind?”