The Last Satyr: The Company is Formed Part 1

Their initial experience with tobacco was like a symphony of open-mouthed gags, coughs, and facial contortions that would have made a seasoned opera singer jealous. If they were aiming for the high notes of regality, they landed squarely in the pit of embarrassment. They had no more success than teaching a cat to fetch.

The two boys quickly learned from this mistake and realized that the object was not to inhale it, but only pretend to. Once they had filled their mouths with the smoke, it became obvious to them both that inhaling was not the true purpose of how to enjoy it.

And after a while, they hit upon the secret fun of what it was. With Young Joe’s successful lessons in skullduggery being taught, they were now sitting by the edge of Fish River with their fishing poles out and eating watermelon with the tobacco pipe lit up with its seductive, sweet fragrance. They were leaning back and learning the art of how to blow smoke rings. Not that they actually knew how, but it was a very interesting source of wondrous entertainment to try and one every young man seeks to master.

The obvious true purpose behind a pipe was enjoying the fragrance and blowing rings. Anything else was undesirable, and a mistake that detracted from the art form. After a while, they each successfully blew a few rings, creating a feeling of grand achievement. The smoke rings they attempted to blow were akin to dreams taking form, each one a fleeting glimpse of their carefree aspirations.

“My!” Young Joe finally declared, leaning back as he got the knack. “I’ve got to admit this is the life! I mean, here we are on a sunny day with all we can eat and a good smoke. I don’t think it gets any better than this.”

“Nope!” the boy agreed. “It doesn’t.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever worked less for such a good crop,” Joe said, his gaze drifting lazily over the tranquil river.

“The best exercise is lying around doing nothing,” the boy told him, taking in the dancing reflections on the water’s surface. “It preserves the body while exercising the mind. Work," he pointed out, "is a necessary evil to be avoided. Work is why our keepers invented women. It’s their job to do our work for us.”

“Wait! Aren’t they supposed to have the babies?”

“They just do that between jobs. That’s why you’ve got to keep them working or else we’d have too many babies. Because if that happens, the women expect you to help feed them.”

That made sense to Young Joe, leaning back again for another puff. “So how come everybody doesn’t do this?”

“I don’t know,” the boy honestly replied, cutting up a watermelon for the two of them. “Too busy working, I guess.”

“Too busy for watermelon?” asked Young Joe. “I can hardly see that!”

“Me neither, but it seems to be true.”

“What do you suppose they’re too busy doing to not do this?”

“Oh! Probably growing these watermelons or otherwise, we’d have none to steal. It's lucky for us they don't know the enjoyment's in the eating and not in the growing.”

A hint of concern flickered across Young Joe’s expression at that, his brow furrowing. “That’s true. But aren’t we being dishonest?”

“Who have we lied to in order to be dishonest?”

“Well! No one yet. But we could.”

“Honesty has its place, same as lying,” agreed the boy, his voice carrying a note of contemplation. “Truth is, indeed, a valuable thing, which is why I always economize on it."

Here, he paused to make his point. "But there’s a reward for both. Suppose somebody you like has a big old ugly pimple on their forehead and they ask you how it looks. Would you be honest and tell them they look ugly or lie and tell them it looks okay?”

Young Joe’s imagination focused on trying to paint that vivid picture. “How big is the pimple?”

“As big as that watermelon you’re eating.”

“Seems I ought to tell them they’re ugly.”

“Seems to me they won’t you like you if you do,” said the boy. “Where’s the reward in that? But, if you lie and say it looks okay, they’ll like you and you’ll be rewarded with friendship.”

A thoughtful nod accompanied Young Joe’s response. “Say! That’s right! So do we always lie?”

“Unless all else fails, yes, we do. As a last resort, I find when I tell the truth, it will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

“But aren’t we going to get in trouble for this?”

“Oh! Sure!” the boy said. “If they were to catch us–but anything that’s fun is worth getting in trouble for.”

“I suppose that’s true too,” said Young Joe with a slow nod. “But won’t we get a whipping for stealing?”

“We didn’t steal anything,” the boy said. “All we did was borrow without asking. When I take you home, I’ll return your father his pipe and his pouch. Now if I return it, it was just borrowed. That’s how borrowing works. You borrow something and then you bring it back. Stealing is when you don’t bring it back.”

“How are we going to return these watermelons we’re eating?”

“Oh! We’re not returning them. These watermelons are our pay for helping old man Potter in harvesting them.”

“How’d we help him?”

“Well, now! Don’t you know anything about farming?” said the boy. “We picked them for him and saved him the trouble. Now he don’t have to! What’s more, you’ve got to thin out a crop. It lets the rest of the crop grow even bigger. We just thinned out old Potter’s watermelon patch for him. We did him a favor. Now the rest got more room to grow and he didn’t have to do it himself.”

“You mean we helped him out?”

“We did!” the boy declared. “Twice! And, if we hadn’t, what happens to the ones he doesn’t eat?”

“They rot, I suppose.”

“That’s right! They rot. These watermelons here are the ones that would have rotted, anyway. We just saved old Potter the trouble of harvesting a watermelon he wasn’t going to eat. And we helped him pick his crop and didn’t even charge him for it. Most farmers pay for their labor. We did him a favor.”

“Yeah!” Young Joe agreed. “I suppose we did.”

“Darn right, we did,” the boy said, drawing a puff. “You know, if folks knew what we did for Potter, they’d make heroes out of us.”

“Why is that?”

“Because we rob from the rich and give to the poor. It’s a gallant work. They’ve even got a word for it. It’s called taxation.”

“We rob from the rich and give to the poor?”

“We do.”

“What poor did we give this to?”

“Why, to you and me! Who is poorer than us?”

“Nobody, I guess.”

“See? We’re the most deserving,” the boy stated. “But if we ever find anyone more deserving than us, than we got to give it to them.”

“That seems fair.”

“It’s what a hero does.”

“So how come you don’t tell everybody what a hero you are, boy?” Young Joe asked. “Everybody here thinks you’re nothing but a lowdown thief and a liar. You ought to change that and let them know you’re a hero, instead. Why don’t you?”

“Can’t,” said the boy, shaking his head. “Real heroes never brag about their being heroes. They don’t do it for the glory. They do it for the poor people like you and me.”

Young Joe wrapped his thought around that. “A hero nobody knows about? I guess I could live with that. It’s different, but it has a good feeling.”

“A man ought to be humble about his accomplishments and not proud.”

“True,” Joe agreed, “very true. My daddy says that.”

“Your daddy’s a hero of mine.”

“Why? Because he brought you back from the mountains?”

“Yes. You can bet no elf would have done that. And he never bragged about it or nothing. All these years and he’s never asked me to thank him. He’s never said I owe him a thing. Your pa just did it. That’s what a hero does.”

“Yeah!” said Joe with a nod. “I guess my Pa is a hero.”

“Sure he is, and so are you! A few more trips to old Potter’s watermelon patch and we’ll have trimmed his crop down to the perfect size. He won’t have a single, useless melon to pick or throw away.”

“And the ones that are left will be extra big,” Joe added.

“There you go,” said the boy. “And us poor people will not go hungry. Everybody’s happy!”

“I think I’m going to like being a hero with you, satyr boy.”

“It’s a good life,” the boy told him. “Of course, it’s our secret what heroes we are. We can’t ever tell anyone.”

“No. I don’t suppose we should or I’d get a whipping.”

“See? That’s why we lie. We get two rewards. We get the first reward of these watermelons plus the second reward of not being spanked afterward by not being caught. That’s the best reward of all.”

Young Joe didn't quite follow. “Why can’t we just tell them we were helping old Potter thin his fields?”

“Because then we’d be bragging and heroes don’t brag. So we tell them anything else but that. That’s why we lie.”

“That makes sense,” agreed Joe with a nod, impressed. “You sure seem mighty smart about all this. Can you read?”

“Some.”

“I wish I could read.”

“Now why would you want to read?” the boy wanted to know, turning his head to look at Joe. “Once you learn to read, they just keep sending you back to school to read even more and I haven’t read a good school book yet. If I were you, I’d never let school interfere with my education.”

Young Joe had no choice anyway, as he had no human school, so he agreed. “Works for me.”

For a while, their conversation ended there while they puffed on the pipe, pretending to inhale. There’s just something to be said about looking like you’re smoking. You’re showing off not just to someone else but to yourself. It’s like being mature and civilized and an accomplished liar all at once. It was just grand.

Yet the most critical lesson for Young Joe still remained, a lesson that would test the bounds of their mischievous camaraderie.