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Chapter 9: A Business Trip to Bohemia

  “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6

  Well after midnight, Luke yawned and found an alley--fixin’ to crash below moonlight, to sleep beneath shiny-glorious stars. But as he reached that alley, a tall thin young man with a neat beard, cheap sunglasses and a red skullcap, leaning against the stone wall, shot out an arm to bar Luke’s path. As though to give his recommendation weight, he first introduced himself as, “With-it Larry: Famed Poet and Cultured-up Dude,” before warning Luke gravely, “My fellow human being, Take my advice: I’ve been down that road before, and it’s not worth your trouble. That road, like life, is a dead end.”

  “Um, I just lookin’ for a place to sleep,” Luke replied, and the beatnik relented and stalked away, reading wounded poetry in the dark, after disdainfully getting in the last cryptic word: “Sleep… is the slumber of the weary. And, like life, the simple sleep right through it.”

  At about seven in the morning, Luke was wishing he had followed the beatnik’s advice. Luke was still a little sore from all that dancing, and sleeping on gravel all night hadn‘t helped! (Hindsight, eh?) So he followed the standard recipe for remedy that his high school football coach had taught him years before: that is to say, he was walking it off. He was starting to feel better. It was a knockout day, as the reliable sun had risen up to make everything so so pretty.

  Luke turned the corner from Melissa Row onto Gepetto Street. He was in a pleasant middle-class residential neighborhood, and there were lots of trees, soft dawn sunshine, and birds a-singin’. Luke smiled and waved at the birds. Then he met a kid made out of wood, who was riding a Big Wheel. (“Gepetto’s Kid”, the Mayor would later explain, “Pino somethin’. I forget. Pino Rizzi? No that’s not it.”) The kid had a funky three-cornered hat with a feather in it, and he had a long nose, and an honest face. He was wearing shorts, because it was summer, and a gray and blue T-shirt with a lion logo and the words “Property of the Detroit Lions”. (Poor kid.)

  “Hey Kid, aren’t you up kind of early? It is Saturday, Sleeping-In-Day,” Luke reminded him.

  The Kid smiled. He had no teeth.34 “Yeah, man, but that means it is also my Dad’s day to sleep in. That is why I got up early and ‘accidentally’ woke him up. That is half the fun of being a kid. The other half is playing road hockey with the neighbor kids. I think I’ll go wake up them and their parents now, so we can get a game up and make lots of noise and wake up the old retired folks whose kids are grown!”

  “Gosh, you are a mean-spirited little guy, aren’t you,” predicted Luke.

  “Oh no,” Gepetto’s Kid denied. “I have the noblest of intentions. I figure somebody’s got to wake up the neighbors so they won’t miss this ace-beauty day. It’s a dirty job, but hey, I am up to the challenge.” He winked in a rascally fashion. “Hey, do you want to join us?” he offered.

  Luke begged off, warning of his inevitable roughness, wrath and rule violations. Besides, he had an appointment to keep.

  “Okay. See you later Mister.” Then the wooden boy pedaled off on his Big Wheel, as loudly as he could, down the gravel road. There’s your wake-up call, people.

  Luke continued on his mission, and soon he found himself on Bigshot Street. The houses were even bigger than the ones on Gepetto Street, and so were the yards. Luke checked out those fancy homesteads and concluded, “The Mayor must live in one of these here expensive homes, since he works for the government.” Luke didn’t know which one the Mayor lived in, so he took a wild guess. He picked the largest palace on the corner, in stunning white marble, with a red picket fence and a Bohemian flag draped off the balcony. Luke went up and pounded on the door, looking for Willy.

  An old guy with a cane and a gray beard answered the door, wearing a dark blue silk bathrobe with a lightning bolt on the chest, and a yellow beret. He was smoking a pipe, and he looked exceptionally classy, and moderately sleepy, and a little bit like Ernest Hemingway.

  “Hey, what luck; it is Mayor Willy!” Luke exclaimed.

  “It is good to see you too,” Willy said politely.

  “Oops, I didn’t wake you, did I?” Luke said apologetically.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. When you get as old as I am, you don’t worry so much about the time--you’re just happy to be able to wake up again at all. I know that sounds terrible, but really it’s a good thing. When you’re thankful and happy to be alive each morning, it helps you have a great day.”

  “Say, I suppose it would! Thanks for the tip,” Luke thanked him.

  “Hey, I’m here to help; that’s why I’m the mayor.”

  “With that in mind, how ‘bout you help me get my election campaign underway,” Luke suggested.

  “Of course! Come on in. I’ll be with you in a few minutes, I just have to get dressed. In the meantime, you can hang out and read my Huskers Illustrated. It’s on the davenport.”

  “Wow, Thanks!” said Luke. (In awe.)

  Mayor Willy came back in a few minutes, all showered up and wearing khaki pants and a Barry University sweatshirt, and a pair of sandals. He started lookin’ through the kitchen cupboards. “What do you want for breakfast, Son?” he called into the living room. “Here, I found a box of peanut brittle! How ‘bout that?”

  “For breakfast?” Luke asked doubtfully, with a furrowed forehead.

  Willy shrugged. “It is Saturday,” he offered.

  Luke could get behind that. He put down the magazine and joined the Mayor at the kitchen table for a plate of peanut brittle and a glass of milk. “Crunch crunch. Yum! Hooray! Thanks!” said Luke. Finishing their healthy meal entitled them to licorice for dessert. Ah, a bachelor’s life. Then they got down to business. “So tell me, Mayor Willy, how shall I go about getting elected?” Luke asked earnestly.

  “Well now, the traditional course is you give a few speeches, put up a few posters, and kiss a few babies.”

  “Why babies? They can’t vote. I would rather kiss some of the pretty young women in this town. I think I would get more votes that way, and I know I would have more fun!”

  “True, but you could also get into more trouble,” Willy cautioned.

  Luke remembered the story of Reuben and the jealous husband. “Oh yeah. See, that is why I consulted you--you are a learned political veteran.”

  “Yep. Anyway, we’ve got to write some good posters and speeches. We need to use big words and catchy slogans without really promising anything. Politics is all about image. And you know, I think you’ve got the right image to pull this off: an innocent, big-hearted, country-boy. It’ll make the people think you’re one of them, and they’ll elect you. Pretty sneaky eh? Coz then you get to live in this big mansion!”

  “Intriguing. But won’t I be at a disadvantage, being a stranger?”

  Willy shook his head. “Of course not; Chair is a big town. That’s the whole thing about politics: the world has gotten so populous that nobody really knows anybody. So people don’t really know whether you’re a good guy or not. That’s why image is so important: it’s more important to seem like a good guy than to actually be one. Sad but true. Fortunately, you have both substance and image at once... oh just like me of course,” Willy remembered to brag. “That is why I want you to become the new mayor!”

  “Crafty,” Luke praised, catching on. “Okay, so what slogan shall we use for my campaign posters?” Willy thought about it for a while, before Luke interrupted him: “How about this one, which we used to coax people to sign up for a pool tournament back home in Hun-Country: “Multiple pockets; Everyone wins!”35

  Willy wrinkled up his nose. “Clever, but inappropriate for an election. It sounds like you’re offering to buy votes, or take bribes, or something.” Then he thought it over and reversed himself: “On second thought, maybe we will make a couple posters with that slogan, for some of my special ‘supporters’.”


  Luke tried again: “How ’bout, ‘A vote for Luke will help get Luke elected, and you will like that because Luke is a real nice guy who believes in honesty and peace.’”

  Willy shook his head, and put his fingers close together: “Better trim it down to something shorter,” he advised.

  “A vote for Luke is a vote for peace?” Luke said hopefully, only to be shown the ‘shorter’ gesture once again. “Vote for Luke?” he finally tried, and this time the Mayor gave a big thumbs-up.

  “Time-tested,” he proclaimed, from his storehouse of experience. “We also gotta get some of the niche markets though. Bring aboard some of those country-music loving, working-class voters. Hey, I know! Let’s try something like: ‘Oh joy! Luke’s a Good Ol’ Boy!’ And we’ll have a picture of you and your Stetson and your gee-tar. Just a pickin’ and a grinnin’. But lemme see--they might get the notion that you’re simple or something, so we need another one to let the idealistic college kids know you’ve got a brain in your head. Maybe something simple like: ‘Real Smart, Big Heart.’ And we can have a picture of you scratching your chin and looking thoughtful. And smiling--smiles always go over well.”

  “Right on!” Luke agreed. “You sure know your stuff. Hey, where are we going to get a picture of me? We have no camera.”

  “True,” Willy admitted. But I have a friend who can draw quite well: Jean L’Artiste. French dude. From France. We can go see him later this afternoon. But first let us write a good campaign speech for you.”

  Then they hunkered down and put their heads together, and crafted a pretty good speech, remembering to use lots of big words (like ‘ignominious’, ‘truculent’ and ‘spatula’--a lot of lesser campaigners overlook that last one!)

  Later that afternoon, after participating in a road hockey game with the local youth, Luke and Willy headed downtown to see the Mayor’s artist friend.

  Luke had been reluctant to join the game for fear of hurting one of the kids with his aggressive play, but the Mayor had convinced him that joining the neighborhood kids in play would be a public relations coup. Luke’s assessment was more on target than the Mayor’s optimism however--for sure enough, Gepetto’s Kid had been laying the lumber quite a bit, and his sharp wooden elbows had helped create a combustible situation. Luke finally got fed up after being slashed one time too many, and he wound up getting in a scrap and breaking the kid’s nose.

  “Hardly an auspicious beginning to your public relations campaign,” the Mayor scolded him, making use of another one of those big words I warned you about.

  “Hey, he asked for it,” Luke said sheepishly, trying to justify beating up the kid. “That kind of stickwork has no place in the game. And if he didn’t want to go me, he shouldn’t have messed with me.”

  “Still, it doesn’t look too good. Luckily, he’s a tough little kid, and I know he’s not going to make a big thing out of it. He’s had his nose broken before, and it always heals up like magic. Also, no one will believe that little liar anyway when he tells them what happened. Good thing for you, Tough Guy!”

  “Hey, I’m a Good Ol’ Boy, remember? It’s part of the package.”

  By this time they had reached the downtown, and they turned left from Small Business Street onto Artist Alley. An arch spanned each entrance. Artist Alley was a groovy scene! It was a narrow dirt track flanked by several wooden row houses, and a cafe, and an apartment building that had balconies even! The sun was shining, and all the people on the street were smiling and loving one another. They had colorful clothes, and were wearing Lennon-style tinted sunglasses. Sitting on a bench writing poetry, sporting a purple scarf and a rakish pirate’s cap, was the dashing young poet Emily the Kid: who was famed for skirting the shores of the surreal, marauding with meter, raiding with rhyme, falling suddenly upon the slumberers, attacking with angst, firing salvos of sentiment, pursuing you like truth, grappling with the hard issues, invading with imagery, flogging you with fancy, keelhauling you with compassion, and capturing your heart--then marching you off the short plank of the known, and into the cool and cleansing oceans of possibilities... and all the while, never-once-ever using too much alliteration or over-extending a metaphor, as lesser writers are wont to do! However... she was alternating rapidly between smiling, glaring, and looking thoughtful (as poets must), which quite unnerved Luke and made him shrink from approaching her.

  So instead he met a tall blind Egyptian named Yassin Amal, who was painting a desert scene, with camels. He was also smoking a Camel. Luke stopped to watch the painter, as Willy the Mayor bustled about, pressing the flesh and speaking to some of his ‘boosters of substance’. Luke was quite impressed by the blind man, and wondered out loud: “The mayor said we were here to see Jean L’Artiste for some campaign posters, are you him? he?? ...dat guy?”

  The blind artist shook his head sadly. “I could use the work, and you can see I have talent, but the mayor doesn’t want my help because I am a recent immigrant and hence I have ‘no political capital’. Not only has Jean-L’ been here longer, but his roommate is quite a famed figure with lots of influence. So he gets the work, and I gets the shaft. Them’s the breaks. All in a day’s work (or lack thereof), for a starving artist.” Then he went on to explain how his specialty was drawing murals of a Pyramid with a big Eye hanging over it, for optometrists’ offices of course, but “There are only so many optometrists in town and they all have their murals by now! So no more glory days for me. Now I just hope to sell a painting a day to survive.” (Sigh, a very sad story.)

  Luke wanted to help the man out, but he didn’t really have anyplace to hang a painting, since he himself was still mainly staying in the house without walls. Besides, here was Mayor Willy tugging at his sleeve...

  Mayor Willy was pointing at a window above the cafe, in which a French flag hung. “Our man Jean L’Artiste lives up there in that garret. You wanna go see him?” Luke indicated Let’s-go-for-it, and they did.

  They went into the Maison Francaise Cafe, and looked about. It was a pretty smooth joint, lit by several skylights and an oil lamp. There were colorful abstract paintings hanging on the walls, and a contemporary sculpture made out of tin, chintz, and treacle. There were lots of plants, including an elm tree that grew right up through one of the skylights into the a propos sky. There were lots of people hangin’ out and talking about life: mostly artsy types. There were also a couple big bikers with leather jackets and beards sitting at the table nearest the door, and they were arm-wrestling. They looked a little out of place in this avant-garde cafe on Artists Alley, but looks can be deceiving, eh. Deep down, they were really sensitive guys. (Ahem, no, not that sensitive.) One was a writer, the other a talented cellist.

  An Anarchist named Brian was sitting behind the bar, minding the store. He was eating Tofu. He was kind of pale, but he compensated for it by dressing in black. He didn’t look real tough, but we can’t all be perfect, can we? As Luke and Willy entered, he Grant-ed them his attention: “Mellow greetings, citizens. What shall I get for you this afternoon? A cup of espresso? A plate of Tofu? Some Guava Jelly?”

  “No thank you, we are just passing through, on our way to see Jean L’Artiste,” Willy told him.

  The Tofu Anarchist pointed disinterestedly to a spiral staircase in the center of the Cafe, and then he ignored them and returned his attention to his friends the bikers. “Hey fellas, I get the winner,” he warned them. (After that they made sure they fought to a draw.)

  Luke and Willy climbed the intricate iron staircase to the second floor. They emerged upon a small landing before a bright red door. They knocked on the door. (Knock knock.)

  “Who’s there?” said a French guy with a French accent on ze other side of ze door.

  “The Mayor,” Mayor Willy told him.

  “Mayor who?” French Guy asked in a somewhat cautious, somewhat knock-knock-joking way.

  “Mayor Life be filled with peace, love and joy,” Willy responded generously.

  “Hey, you sound lik
e somebody real friendly. I will let you in, eh.” Then the French Guy kept his promise. “Hey, what do you know, it really is the Mayor!” he said excitedly, feigning surprise, as he opened the door and they came into his cool apartment.

  “Yep. I hate to say I told you so, but...Didn’t I? Anyway, it is good to see you again too, Jean L’Artiste. Oh, and this here is my young friend Luke. He plays guitar and picks on kids, and now he is running for mayor. We were hoping you could fix us up with some cleverly drawn campaign posters.”

  “Well, I am clever, and I do draw, so it seems that you have come to the right place. Have a seat and strike a pose, Luke.”

  Luke did as instructed. He sat in the center of the room, on a wooden apple crate stamped ‘Frank Lane Orchards’. He looked around. It was a very tiny one-room apartment, with bunk-futons in the corner to the right of the window, and on the left a walk-in closet hung with colorful clothes. Beside the red door, on the closet side of the room, was a moneysworth bookshelf (piled high and two-deep), and then an old couch. On the opposite side of the room there was a door to a water-closet. There was a French flag in the window, and Jean’s sketches decorated the walls. From the ceiling hung a crystal chandelier, and on the ceiling above the futons was a poster of Marilyn, (though nobody actually seemed to realize who she was). The apartment was a mess, but a tasteful mess.

  “Pardon my place, eh. It’s not much. Mayor, you must have a seat on my ancient couch. Everything in here is old, for poverty becomes an artist, even as an artist becomes poor. Oh, except for the chandelier, eh. It is brand new, you know? We stole it from the Louvre, my roommate and I.”

  “Your room-mate?” Luke inquired. “Isn’t the place a little small?”

  “True. It is awfully small, this apartment,” Jean L’Artiste said apologetically. “Everything is cramped except my style. But nevertheless, it is financially prudent for me to share my humble abode with a fellow counter-cultural icon, the esteemed beatnik poet With-it Larry.”

  As if on cue, the esteemed beatnik poet With-it Larry came through the red door. “Oh Wow. Company,” he said calmly, trying not to get too happy. “It is good to see you fellas again. But I shan’t get too excited, nor shall I get too attached to you; because I know that you, like life, will soon be gone.”

  “Um, thanks, it’s good to see you too, Larry,” the Mayor responded dryly. “You’re right, we can’t stay long. We’re just here to have my boy Luke’s portrait drawn for our campaign posters. Then we gotta go put ‘em up. You can help if you wish.” Mayor Willy sounded hopeful.

  With-it Larry looked at the Mayor coldly and condescendingly. “Willy. You will forgive me, but I will not assist you in this provincial effort. By their very nature, such election campaigns are both insufferably arrogant, and intolerably divisive. Luke presumes to become mayor by brandishing the both-dubious notions that we need a mayor and a government to lead us or to oversee our affairs, and specifically that he is somehow extraordinary enough (or grandiloquent enough) to fill that role. What egotism, what elitism convinces you that you are better than us, and should become our leader?”36

  Luke didn’t have a ready answer. He hadn’t thought that much about it. Later on, he thought of a few points he could have made in his defense, but at the time being he paused--and that was all With-it Larry needed, to continue with his diatribe: “Furthermore, Interloper, I resent the divisiveness and partisanship of political campaigns. Assuredly, you’ll make some propagandic speeches and try to rally support for your cause, and try to beguile people to get on your side of the issues. And your opponent will do the same. And in so doing, you’ll first blindly ignore all the alternative perspectives that aren’t encompassed by your two campaign platforms. Even once-wise and adaptable policies and positions rapidly become entrenched and intractable. (To say nothing of ludicrous and clichéd.) But what’s worse, you’ll then present your one-sided views as fact, as ‘the only appropriate conclusion for reasonable and non-wicked working families to support.’ Opprobrium replaces equilibrium, and conflagration casts down co-operation. Finally you aggressively disparage the ideology and malign the character of the opposing camp, until they’re smeared, besmirched and sullied. (Not to mention a little bit ticked off.) For what purpose? With battle metaphors flailing, it becomes necessary to ‘win the culture war’, to ‘defeat’ the ‘opponent’, and to advance your own cause at the expense of all other viewpoints--rather than truly trying to serve the wishes of all.”

  “You can’t please everybody,” Luke interjected, repeating a political rule he had learned from his dad, Chief Otis of Hun-Country. (Luke tastefully omitted the second half of the saying, which had never once failed to silence Chief Otis’s erstwhile critics: ‘But you can kill everybody...!’)

  With-it Larry put his face right in front of Luke’s, looked him square in his wide round eyes, and asked piercingly, “How do you know? Have you tried?”

  At this point, Willy came to Luke’s defense. “I have. It honestly can’t be done.”

  “Or maybe you just aren’t the one to do it. And maybe if you really cared about the proletariat as much as you claim, you would have thought about that before you went and got yourself re-elected six times in a row.” Turning to Luke he asked, “I assume you knew that’s where his name comes from? Everyone always wondering ‘Willy run again?’”

  Mayor Willy fired back, “As long as we’re being candid with the lad, admit it: Why are you really criticizing the system and me? Isn’t it simply your selfish anger at my decision to cut funding for the arts?”

  “True, that is a big part of it,” With-it Larry conceded. “Art, like life, is my life.” Then With-it Larry asserted his independence, “But, my friend, we wouldn’t need your funding if you didn’t first take our income away with the heavy hand of taxation. Then after your mansion is built, you dole back a little of our own money and call yourself a ‘benefactor’? Give us liberty instead.”

  This startled the Mayor a little: “I thought you were Radical Leftist Man. You’re sounding positively conservative with that last quote. What happened?”

  Though he hadn’t really examined it before, With-it Larry had no trouble putting his finger on it now: “Well, there’s a thin line between the two if you think about it. They both hate the government, but the liberal thinks the government needs to be doing more to solve problems and make the world better for everyone, and a libertarian thinks the only way for the government to ever solve those problems is to stay out of them! So I guess you could say the big difference between the two is their faith, or hope, in the potential of government. I guess I lost both of those before the end of your fifth or sixth term, Your Majesty!” He curtsied incongruously. “After that, it’s like being dissatisfied with any other service: you just want your money back.”

  Willy sighed, “You poor thing, so young and yet so jaded! I think perhaps you’ve spent a little too much time downstairs with the Tofu Anarchist...”

  “Well, we don’t have room for a spacious kitchenette, and we do need to eat sometimes, Starving Artists though we may be,” Jean spoke up.

  “My point is, it is easy to criticize, but it isn’t so easy to find a better answer. Could you really solve the problems of society so much better than I, With-it Larry?”

  “Not I, nor even my friends and I, but the people of the whole world and I! Working together, we can solve the problems of the whole world! So how do we get all the people of the world to work together? Perhaps it is now too late, perhaps the damage is irreparable: though if so the blame will lie with the political parties and the political leaders and the political boundaries which have long taught separation and sown hatred. Still, that should be our question, that must be our goal! We must reinvent society, based on virtue, love, compassion and peace, rather than on strength and control and pride and exclusion. As cynical as I often appear, still I will hold out hope for an end to all politics. For political divisions, like life itself, are absurd. And as long as division
exists instead of beauty...” Larry concluded, (here reversing the formula for dramatic effect), “It almost seems that our lives, like your eloquent political speeches, are meaningless.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far, but your point is taken. I guess you want us to get our posters and our butts on up out of your apartment,” Mayor Willy supposed.

  “No,” With-it Larry surprised them. “What I want is just this: I want your protégé here to give account of why exactly he’s so eager to be mayor of Chair. If he has a satisfactory answer, I’ll even help you put up the posters!”

  Luke was forthright: “Well, my friends and I, we figured World Leaders have the most power to declare war or peace. I want to be the one who brings peace!”37

  With-It Larry was pleased by Luke’s sincere motives, but wondered, “But why Chair? We always have peace here anyway. Look about you; we aren’t exactly the type of community that would declare war on others. (And wouldn’t that be an amusing sight?) And who would attack us? There’s nothing much here worth taking: half the people are college students, who are notoriously poor, and the other half have graduated and become starving artists, need I say more? The only thing really worth having is probably the Mayor’s mansion...and the easiest way to gain that has always been to run for Mayor.” He cleared his throat accusingly, Ahem. Then he finished: “Besides, Luke, real leadership is found not in wielding power, but in the quietness of the wise and the patient strength of the masses. And real peace lies in loving and living honorably--and politicians are not honorable and do not preach love.”

  At this point Jean, who was a recent Christian convert38, couldn’t help wondering, “Luke? Did you pray about it?” A little embarrassed, Luke admitted that he hadn’t. Jean reassured him. “That’s okay. But do keep it in mind for next time.” Luke promised to remember (and promptly forgot.) “Assuredly God brought you here for a reason anyway. Prob’ly not to listen to this guy though,” jabbing his thumb towards his roommate--who at the first mention of prayer had steered Mayor Willy towards a corner to continue their debate more privately, leaving Jean to address Luke one-on-one. “So maybe there’s something I can tell you. All I know is, ‘The easiest way is not always the best way, the convenient course is not always the true course.’”

  Luke was sad inside now, trying to figure out what to do, because Tom the Prophet had warned him against trying too hard! Luke told that story, and asked a little crossly, “So which is it?”

  Jean tried to reconcile the contradiction: “Oh, it’s the same warning actually. It’s possible to try too hard, and search all over, and rack your brain to think of what to do. Or you can take it easy and expect the very first option you consider to work out fine. But you go astray in either event, if you fail to ‘Let God provide the way’.”

  Luke still felt a little put out. “I can’t pray, or let God do anything, until I believe... but I am trying to learn to believe. Shouldn’t God honor that? Why would he bring me here then if this is a misstep?”

  Jean was nonplussed. “We learn from our mistakes, we gain resolve from our defeats, and we are forced to trust in God when our own ways fail. It’s been said that, ‘God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars.’”39

  Encouraged, Luke the one-time warrior shot back, “Oh, then I’m in there!”

  Jean continued, with an experienced laugh, “The quickest way to trust God to guide your steps is to take a good look at where your own steps take you! Maybe they’ll bring you money, maybe they’ll even gain you friends, but they’ll never, ever, carry you to heaven. You may even manage to build a temporary and fragile peace somewhere, but you’ll never, on your own, discover ‘the peace that passeth understanding’.”

  And Luke was left to mull that over, for at this point Jean finished his second sketch of Luke, so Mayor Willy paid him for the work and bought some tracing paper off him, and then he and Luke shook hands with Jean and Larry and headed towards the red door. They left on good terms, because despite their disagreement, both Mayor Willy and With-it Larry prided themselves on being big enough to respect the other idiot’s opinion; while Luke the Hun and Jean L’Artiste had formed the beginning of a sacred bond.

  Luke and Willy went out the red door, and they spiraled down the iron stairway to the cafe. They waved good-bye! good-bye! to all the good people of Artists’ Alley, and they went back to Bigshot Street.

  It was still a sunny day, and quite warm, and skies the color of peace kept in remembrance the hopeful vision of world harmony that With-it Larry had described. As they lay in the sun, in the big yard of the big house on Bigshot Street, tracing campaign posters from the wonderful drawings that Jean L’Artiste had rendered, Luke said to Mayor Willy: “Mayor, do you think he was right? I mean, I know some people want to get elected so that they can soak the poor by living in a big house. But I’m out to bring about World Peace. And maybe he’s right: this may not be the best way. I reckon any true and lasting peace must lie within the hearts of the people--it can’t depend on a temporary elected official. And while a political leader does have some clout, as Hosanna suggested, maybe it takes more than clout to get this problem solved. Maybe it takes all of us pulling together! And I guess I can’t bring that about all by myself, but I can help: not by bein’ political, but by bein’ peaceful, like Larry said. Maybe instead of being mayor, as a simple Concerned Citizen I can better become part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

  The Mayor laughed out loud: “Oh, now won’t this be ironic! With-it Larry talked you out of running for mayor...so now I’ll have to run again! Oh, he’ll love that! Maybe that’s why God brought you here--some say He has a sense of humor. But kid, I think you’re making a mistake. I think you could get somewhere in politics, and I think you could be quite an effective diplomat, in an innocent, friendly way. Oh well. You may be right, and even if you aren’t, it’s your mistake to make. Do me a favor, though--sleep on it, K?” Willy patted Luke on the shoulder and smiled. “In the meantime, let’s get these posters up, just in case.”

  Luke agreed, and they went and put up the posters in the twilight. They put one of his “Good Ol’ Boy” posters up in Bo’s Country Roadhouse, and another at Tom’s Diner, and a third at the prison. They put his “Real Smart, Big Heart” posters up on Money Street, and at Chair Community College, and at the Observatory. Then they went back to Willy’s Mayoritorious Mansion, and went to sleep.

  In the middle of the night, Luke woke up from a vague sad dream, knowing simply that it was time to move on, and to be himself. There might be a time to take office. But it would not be here. It would not be now. He left the mayor a thank you note explaining, and while he was writing he took out his Bible and added Tom’s sign, ‘Yield’, With-it Larry’s word ‘Together’, and Jean’s phrase, ‘Let God’. Then, smiling, he almost even added the Tofu Anarchist’s greeting, ‘Mellow’.

  He had to think harder to discover what the Mayor had taught him, but finally realized that he was most grateful simply for the way Willy had gone out of his way to try to help him, and so added the general word, ‘Help’. Then Luke smiled and slipped quietly out of Chair.