Ella Minnow Pea: List 2

Neighbor turning in neighbor, perpetuating old grudges and grievances with this new weapon unleashed upon us by the High Island Council.

The sweet scent is there—the innate desire to blossom, but the cold wind locks the bud in place.

I stood outside the door to the bathroom inhaling deeply the intoxicating scent of your bath beads. I would have barged right in as I used to in the old days, but you seemed all too content enjoying your “privy time.”

I am thus quite aware, sir, that you are not in any form, shape, or manner having a work-related conversation with Anselm Taylor (who knows to call on you if he needs you) but are, instead, even as I write this, selecting for me some appropriately commemorative gift which you have absolutely no business buying, given the precariousness of our present financial situation.

When the flogging had ended, he allegedly (I was not there.) raised his head and let spew forth a long and repetitive illicit-letter-peppered tirade against the L.E.B. officers who had administered his punishment.

Until I can procure cups and a massive coil of string, these letters that pass between us will comprise our sole means of communication, and we should try to make the best of them.

But the possibility does exist that scales may soon fall from the eyes of the esteemed H.I.C., and they might see their way to rescinding this horrible law.

While his father pleaded to the L.E.B. thug-uglies to ignore young William’s boldly insolent hurlatory, to Willy’s mother fell the difficult task of propelling her son with every ounce of maternal passion onto the boat that would serve both as his transport to permanent exile, and, paradoxically, the very instrument of his survival.

Yet collaterally a terrible fear has taken hold, robbing me of any thought of recourse.

While I want to believe that the self-destruction of the second tile will bring the Exalted Quintet to its collective senses, the very real possibility exists that they could—these self-proclaimed High and Almighties—find in its demise true validation for their earlier decree and convenient justification for its subsequentia.

At the cusp of midnight on August 27/28, as you surely know by now, the letter “Q” will be stricken from our vocabulary as utterly and thoroughly as was its hapless predecessor.

At the cusp of midnight on August 27/28, as you surely know by now, the letter “Q” will be stricken from our vocabulary as utterly and thoroughly as was its hapless predecessor.

Life, no doubt, will change little from what we now know; as luck would have it, there are simply not all that many words in the English language which claim this letter among its constituents.

I am in agreement with you that as our anger against the Council grows, it has yet to exceed in potency the abject fear which invades all aspects of our readjusted lives.

Legal recall was, even prior to the incineration of the relevant statutes, a complicated process, and now, in the absence of written guidelines, remains a virtual impossibility.

But not before publishing and leafletting this town with hundreds of copies of a most special swan song edition, carrying the apt title, “The Bees’ Lament”—being a delightful four-page conversation between two bees marooned upon a keeperless farm.

The paper—I wish I could have sent you a copy, but destroyed it quickly after Mum and Pop and I shared a tearful laugh—contains, below the masthead and the aforementioned title, the frenetic repetition of a certain letter—four thousand, perhaps five thousand glorious times!

He has left this town with a yawning communicational chasm—a great lacuna which I see no one stepping forward to fill.

I cannot wait to see your father’s burgeoning collection of petite vases and jugs!

Yesterday I was even naughtier than usual: I carved the dreaded letter in the bark of a lonely mimosa, carved it with a kitchen knife in great broad slashes of impertinence and had myself a delicious clandestine laugh.

But I wonder, as well, how much of my present disagreeableness and languor (even prior to this lexical crisis) is due to the simple fact that I have no one with whom to share my life—no companion, romantic affiliation or otherwise, save my mother.

Cousin Ella, I must relate something that has happened which Mother has made me vow not to divulge. Yet I cannot honor her wishes on the matter, for I can no longer bear my concerns for her alone.

Perhaps Aunt Gwenette may advise me as to how I might be of sufficient succor to her.

As for how to assist her in her present state of despondency, I can offer no advice but that you continue to be the kind and understanding daughter I know you are, and give her the time she needs to find her way back to her former sunny disposition.

But I assure you, recover she will. She is intrinsically resilient.

Mistakes will be made by all of us during these trying times, and it is my belief that latitude should be extended to those like my mother who are employed in professions in which one is called upon to speak for long, wearying periods and through a wide swath of subject areas.

Why do we follow, without misgiving, the will of Nollop?

Mr. Creevy had heard of my publication and wondered if I might like to write about his recent expulsion. He is presently without income and says he could benefit from any compensation I might offer. I agreed, but soon came to see that another more broadly encompassing article begs to be written.

Now to my reason for writing: I would like to come to Nollop for a lengthy visit, for purposes of investigating this odd, unprecedented political and social crisis in which you now find yourself embroiled.

But if you feel as many of your fellow islanders do, that the actions of the Council should be brought to the light of public scrutiny with my earnest little journal serving as appropriate vehicle, perhaps your convictions might outweigh any misgivings you may have about the reason for and the manner of my visit.

I have discussed your petition with my daughter Tassie. She has allayed my minor concerns, and so I am able to hereby welcome you to our home as “good old friend of the family.”

I am excited to learn of your soon-to-be houseguest. Anything to boost Aunt Mittie’s foundering spirits, and yours as well!

Each member in deliberate provocation of the High Island Council had marched single file into last Tuesday's open session wearing cartoon masks and making loud duck sounds—sounds which any sentient Nollopian knows by now are forbidden—while holding aloft large cardboard containers of a certain recently outlawed brand of American oatmeal.

As the Rasmussens were being manacled by members of the L.E.B., Council Member Willingham asked for the reason behind such a flagrant flouting of the “clear and unambiguous” law against use of the seventeenth letter—a flouting made all the more “pernicious” by the enthusiastic abandon with which it was embraced.

And if this produces no outcry—especially the laying of leather tassel upon the youthful backs of my nine-year-old twin daughters Becka and Henrietta—then please trundle us without delay from this island of cringe and cowardice, for we no longer wish to belong to such a despicable confederacy of spinal-defectives.

And so Mum and Pop and I stood and watched the harrowing and loathsome sight of children being ritually beaten, and the commensurately disturbing picture of frightened onlookers—“the town baa-baas,” as Pop has taken to calling our dear neighbors—doing what they do oh so very well, and that is: absolutely nothing.

And so Mum and Pop and I stood and watched the harrowing and loathsome sight of children being ritually beaten, and the commensurately disturbing picture of frightened onlookers—“the town baa-baas,” as Pop has taken to calling our dear neighbors—doing what they do oh so very well, and that is: absolutely nothing.

And as we absorbed, in full, the lamentable scene being played out before us, we found ourselves entertaining identical thoughts—concretious thoughts of retaliation and the ultimate reclamation of a society so disturbingly transmogrified.

A first meeting to be held in our home a week from tomorrow under the guise of Pop's twice-monthly poker game. To plot and plan our insurrection—our nascent underground movement to restore a full twenty-six letter alphabet to the people—deserving or not—of this, our presently polluted island home!

While researching the series of articles I now plan to write on the Council’s recent actions and the tangible effects those actions are having upon the residents of Nollop, I seek, in addition to your hospitality and safe cover, assistance from you in reaching that one member of the Council you feel most open to reading the chemists’ report, and making a case for a reversal of these apocalyptic directives.