Gertrude, WY. 23 September. — Three days after Bob Devilagga, in a last ditch effort to disburse himself of any lingering traces of neutral bigotry, had shaved off his Van Dyke, his sister Kiko managed to get herself seduced by his lexical therapist. You’d think such a banality would’ve taken no one by surprise; his lexical therapist, evidently, was the only one used to such things.

Four days later, the pleasantly post-seductive Kiko found herself in Tokyo, where she dispensed with the excess -lagga of her name — a move her agent, after judicious study, had prudently advised her to make, in order to more fully exploit the untapped Indian market, and to render more orotund the sonority of her eponym. Thence to Bombay, Bukhara, Ankara, Moscow, Budapest, Paris, Manahatta, and back to Paris in time to wow the autumn runways with her sensuously witty strut.

In Paris, she finally decided to give in to the matrimonial pleadings of a certain Paul-Klée Bernouilli, globe trotting photographer, long time Parisian acquaintance, and intimate of her dearest friend, Gennifleur Schlame, who was, herself, flourishing in a four year ménage with a seasoned Norlian sociophysiologist, Dr. Bernard Vighdan. Besides, a prudent Gallic marriage, Kiko reasoned, would insure the maintenance of those international perks that otherwise would be lost with the curtailment of her ephemeral career.

Bob meanwhile, realizing that the parasynchrony of shaving and seduction could augur only ill, had decided to recultivate his beard in an attempt to regain a few lost karma points, and to vacate his Tixpu studio in favor of the charms of that eternal emblem of his idyllic boyhood — the ranch just south of Gertrude, Wyoming that his parents, six months in the grave, had willed him. Located but seven and a half kilometers from town proper, this compact, two-story, faux-pine-logged cabin — 2BR, 2BA, study, living room, large, airy, well-lit kitchen, running water, gas heat, and two fully-functional fireplaces, one upstairs, one down — was nestled in the wooded bend of a trout-filled tributary of the Olnziiankta (Upper Owlstain) River that bisected 1553 sprawling acres of barren scrub land inhabited by prairie dogs, pronghorn antelope, golden eagles and the occasional stray sheep that managed to wedge its way through the barbed wire that marked the boundary of the Rocking Double Slant B Circle D ranch. Bob had been born here; he’d spent the first seventeen and a half years of his life here; he had vowed to die here. But not before roasting in the fire place freshly caught trout for breakfast and every fall shooting, gutting, skinning, jerking, and stewing a lovely pronghorn doe.

Gertrude was founded in 1847 by itinerant Intrussyan, Miano Driec, better known to Appalachian ears as Nolan E. Deal, whose efforts to found the first sagradu east of the Arathu met with naught when, from among all those recruited from the great migration of ’46, he could find no qualified raibbabe, and, at the nadir of his despair, was struck down by a Fukari arrow that, miraculously, had its momentum greatly damped by the book that Deal religiously carried in his left breast pocket, causing but a slight flesh wound that did, however, bleed quite profusely. The book was none other than the first edition of Thomas Campbell’s great narrative poem about the dawn, flowering and tragic demise of that utopian community of Appalachia, published in 1809, which, in all modesty, I must admit I’m the proud owner of, having found it, cleanly and thoroughly pierced through the center, its back pages slightly brittle from rusty blood, gathering dust on the back shelves of an Owlstain bookseller, the name of which professional etiquette bars me from revealing. The oldest standing building in Gertrude is thus not an Intrussyan sagradu, as Deal would have had it, but a aecular agore bar slash sex logur that sprang up almost fifty years later, during the brief turn of the century boom that gave Gertrude its fame. Deal, though he fully recovered from his brush with Fukari death, never lived to see the town that bears his savior’s name1 spring into anything other than a few shacks and lupanares set into the muddy hills along the banks of the Olnziiankta River. He died, during the Great Blizzard of ’57, from a severe attack of cabin fever.2

About a year before Bob’s momentous shave, the oldest living regular of the bar, Daso “Clonish” Niechala, had disappeared in a freak snowboarding accident. Tony Hamiltonian, the bar’s late proprietor, recalls seeing the spry nonagenarian toss back a couple double arracks, mount his trusty Sne Beray and with a gruff Intrussyan-Fukari “Snoyw smudrto!”3 slithe off toward his favorite sled-grounds on the frozen headwaters of the Olnziiankta R., never to be seen again. His Sne Beray — unlocked ankle toggle dangling — was found two days later near Plynchton’s Plunge. And even though it hadn’t snowed at all during those two days, not even a single boot print of Clonish was ever found. While Fukari like to say that Tlaatlaata so loved Clonish, he decided to transport him special delivery along a bluish beam of light straight to the uppermost bud of the heavenly tiliar, Intrussyans claim it was murder, Ityalians, suicide, and Tagma, simply an old drunk’s slip. A deeply mourning Tony Hamiltonian decided, out of loving remembrance of Clonish, to never serve another Ebeyl or arrack again. The townsfolk, for their part, swore off any strong drink for a year.

The year was drawing to a close. Bob, well versed in the town’s lore, realized that thirsty Gertrude was just a golden windfall waiting to be tickled into his lap. But how tickle it? His offer of partnership to Tony Hamiltonian resulted only in Tony’s stern refusal: if Gertrude was to drink again, he’d have no part in such a profaning of Clonish’s memory and name: Bob was on his own. In a long-distance chat with Kiko, he expressed in passing his desire to rejuvenate the agore bar, and possibly reopen the semi-detached sex logur. Kiko, in her usual blissfully recondite way, merely nodded quietly into the phone, then raised her chin with a question that Bob, apparently, never heard.

In Paris a few days later, after a leisurely lunch hour “flaying of the mule”4 (from what subtle convolution of her brain this charming little pun sprang I have no idea), Kiko told Dr. Vighdan, with whom she’d been having an affair since soon after moving in with Paul-Klée, of her brother’s plan. Upon hearing mention of Gertrude, Vighdan told Kiko, with tears of epiphanal joy, of the common error all Norlian children, of which he was no exception, had made of conflating the (Appalachian) Wyoming of Campbell with the Tetrastic Wyoming of its first president, Firing Utressa — even after realizing his mistake, the bucolic word, Wyoming, conjured up images of man o’ war gin goons and Intrussyan sappers blowing, though starving, their enlisted man’s pay on rounds of cheap arrack, hands of Tradine Oru, and extemporaneous gonorturns with any timorous birkiyam, ronish nene, minion, sexy whore, or puny blond slave in a steamy abandoned stable commandeered into a make-shift AGSAD. Bob had found his partner.

Thus, the proper bureaucratic channels having been breached, by the middle of October Bernard and Gennifleur had debarked to a pleasant clapboard house a block away from what was soon renamed Ye Olde Paris Bistro, and Gennifleur, the only unshaven officer on the Paris force, was soon elected by the mixed Fukari, Tagma, Ityalian, and Intrussyan populace to the post of Sheriff of Gertrude. The move neatly extricated Bernard from the burdensome and lagging (on his part, though ostensibly, not on hers) affair he’d been carrying on with Kiko; fulfilled his childhood fantasy of owning a semi-detached Agore Bar slash Sex Logur in the Tetrastic Realm of Wyoming; revived the waning passion he felt for Gennifleur; and, should he ever feel the urge to resume his sociophysiological practice, eliminated all competitors within a sixty-kilometer radius.

The problem of subletting Vighdan’s rue Simon-Crubellier apartment was easily solved: following their belated honeymoon in Manahatta, Paul-Klée and Kiko would move in; he to resume his photo-editorial responsibilities at the blossoming quarterly he’d recently founded, Le Globe Frotteur; she to express her new-found love of the art of novel writing.

Back in Gertrude, Bob and Gennifleur soon found themselves inexplicably attracted to each other, perhaps because of unresolved, reciprocal psychic traumas that each had suffered in childhood. Bernard, sensing the imminent consummation of adultery, assiduously began to grow his beard. Hirsutism, however, was no anodyne of jealousy; nor could Bernard determine whence this malady had arisen, for after all, in Paris, Gennifleur had cheated on Bernard as much as he on her, and never had any blood lust — for murder, Bernard now realized, was exactly the cure this malady required — been born of such profligacy.

With the faithful Ye Olde Paris Bistro bartender, Mike Turbo, who claimed to be a retired vineslimosa farmer from Beulah, Texas — though he spoke with a strong Ityalian accent clotted with Huerta-Fukari glottals, uvulars, and pharyngeals that went undetected by the Norlian’s naïveté to so many Nearctic things — Bernard plotted the murder of Bob and Gennifleur.

It would be a love-struck double suicide: Bob, naked, hanging by his neck above Gennifleur’s strapped down, spread-eagled naked body; semen from Bob’s ultimate ejaculation coagulating on Gennifleur’s lips, blue from natural gas poisoning. With luck, a stray spark would finish it all off in a brilliant conflagration that’d light up the circumgertrude plains for leagues around; any evidence of foul play would vanish in a few wisps of tarry ash scattered across the late Bob’s 1553 sprawling acres of Rocking Double Slant B Circle D.

A run-in with poachers on Bob’s neighbor’s land caused Gennifleur to be late for the usual teatime tryst. Bob was already strung up — though still breathing, neck unbroken — from the central beam of his upstairs bedroom. Bernard and Mike had just lit a fire in the downstairs fireplace; Bernard was sitting on the couch, keeping an eye out for Gennifleur’s patrol car, due to arrive at the ranch any moment now; Mike, obeying Bernard’s orders, had just started back up the stairs to light a fire in Bob’s bedroom. Gennifleur, however, had already driven up, unheard by Mike and Bernard, from the back of the house. She ascended the outside staircase — the existence of which Bernard was ignorant, both of his prior visits to the ranch having been evening dinner affairs that didn’t go any further than the front door, living room and kitchen — that led directly to Bob’s bedroom, cut the unconscious Bob free, and, with a burst from her pearl-handled Burrasca 9mm, surprised Mike just as he was entering the bedroom. Mike fell unscathed down the staircase; Bernard joined him at the base of the stairs and the culprits returned fire. Gennifleur soon emptied her Burrasca and rushed to the gun case in Bob’s study to retrieve the Depreccata mitraillette his father had used in the war. Bernard and Mike took this opportunity to shoot out the tires in Gennifleur’s patrol car and make a quick getaway in Bernard’s red Ashter.

Gennifleur attended to Bob’s thrombulatory corpuscle; her ministrations, however, were interrupted by the arrival of a battered Yellow Steel station wagon bearing Ure Aders, hard-nosed big-city dick from Agua Prieta, and his unread brother, Urvysc, who hailed (just like me and Bob, among others!) from that city’s wildest suburb, Tixpu. Ure and Urvysc had been hot on the trail of Mike Turbo, who was none other than Kiko’s jilted ex-lover, the infamous Urdostoist from Ostiesa, Xwarpo Agisteo, who, pursuing the model novelist from Bombay to Bukhara, from Bukhara to Ankara, from Ankara to Moscow, from Moscow to Budapest, from Budapest to Paris by way of Prague, from Paris to Manahatta, and back to Paris by way of a circuitous route across the Arathu to Agua Prieta thence back across the Arathu to Owlstain aboard Rick and Djuma Kidjaki’s yacht, had finally cornered her on the twin islands of Aseli and Abenaseli where she was cohabiting with none other than Ure and Urvysc’s brother Urcner. Agisteo killed Urcner; Kiko narrowly escaped by fleeing to Tixpu, thence Tokyo, thence — well, you know the rest.5 Agisteo himself, due to the sloppiness of this unsanctioned, jealousy-fueled killing, incurred the wrath of the Urdostoists: they lifted from him their protective shield. Ure, aided by his brother Urvysc’s Tixpu tracker’s instincts, had followed Agisteo from Agua Prieta to Texas, where, in the sweltering heat of the Beulah vineslimosa fields, their prey managed temporarily to elude them. Summer, however, came to a close, as Agisteo spoor was found leading to Wyoming, where fall, thank Gertrude, had already arrived.

After a quick assessment of options and possibilities, and the on-the-spot deputization by Gennifleur of Bob, the Gertrude-Agua Prieta-Tixpu coalition was off in pursuit of the Norlian-Texas connection. A high speed chase over winding dirt roads was brought to a sudden halt on the banks of the Lower Owlstain: the first snowfall of winter was ushered in by a white-out blizzard worthy of Gertrude’s founder. The pursuers’ consensus, with strangely enough, Urvysc dissenting, was to wait for the snow to stop. Bob and Gennifleur glumly loaded themselves back into Mike’s car and, with the Aders brothers following in the Yellow Steel, drove with a lusty vengeance back to Gertrude, where Bob delighted the dry-lipped brothers with an impeccable bouvarine, drawn from the glosterous vaults of Ye Olde Paris Bistro. Three days later Urvysc’s divining rod managed to locate Mike and Bernard, who were half-way up Devil’s Tower, posing as a couple of late autumn rock climbers. The Aders brothers safely extradited Agisteo to Agua Prieta; Bernard was locked by Gennifleur in the Gertrude jail, where he was to await transfer to Owlstain.

A week before the capture of the two would-be murderers, Bob had invited me to spend a week or two with him at the ranch. Mornings would consist in trout fishing, evenings would be spent dabbling in family systems theory. I readily assented, especially since Bob had told me a few weeks earlier that his sister Kiko’d be there on two month sabbatical from Paris, writing her second novel, Sex Exit; I looked forward to the profoundly liberating experience Kiko was sure to undergo at our reunion.

I arrived in Gertrude just as Bernard was being driven away in an Owlstain patrol car. After a quick fifrequet with Bob at Ye Olde Paris Bistro, chortling all the while on our respective glabrous pasts, Gennifleur drove us out to the Rocking Double Slant B Circle D, where Kiko, I knew, was already in residence. Her pupils dilated when she saw me, and her lower lip quivered with relish of the memory of that Tixpu night five months ago. I must frankly admit that my heart skipped a beat or two in expectation of the week ahead: this jenny, for one, couldn’t wait to be flayed. How was I to know that her chauvinist frotteur of a husband who had a penchant for sweet surprises was armed not only with camera, but gun?

Sagarch Flawndol grew up in Gertrude and now studies in Owlstain. He assures us that, while all names in this ludict are actual, all actions are virtual.