Drones on Shore

Bertie, Bingo, Oofy, Gussie, the Oldest Member and the rest of the crumpets, eggs and beans have been long retired.

Some have found respite in a long, drawn-out summer retreat at Blandings.

Others are avoiding the PGA types who infest the links nowadays, having spoilt a perfectly decent waste of time.

Still others have finally landed themselves in a richly-deserved Sanatorium, suited especially for those who like to keep their lapine friends in their rooms.

Bertie himself is Lord Yaxley and is busy. Oofy and Gussie are running consultancy firms for corporate leadership, financial wealth-mongering and church administration. They live in the Caymans and are in control of everything.

It is Bertie's picture that festooned the table of the Drones' Club, meeting unofficially at the Sunset Grille a few summer nights ago.

The Grille (spelt in that maudlin way of "Wee Nooke") is a crass touristy, overpriced affair perched on the side of an attractive sound on the Eastern Shore somewhere.

The Drones are all new and unknown, and petulant, throwing bread rolls.

"Won't get a brandy and soda here," one egg sniffed.

"Only lime-stuffed Corona and blue swill in fishbowls with umbrellas," a bean muttered.

"I like Corona. It's more honest than your frozen margarita," the youngest, and thus most idealistic, rejoined. "How could you."

"That sun is in my eyes, turn it down."

"'Tis the nature of evening."

"Your English accent is a boor. Please stop."

"Ahem," which was always the first word uttered by the Responsible Member, who ever tried to steer the repartee from the inane to the less inane.

"Ahem, fellow Drones ...

"Aside from our friendly conversation, we need to discuss the status of the Company. The situation is, shall I say, challenging."

"In my office, there is the execrable matter of false translation and counterfeit facsimile documents," the ex-episcopalian said, nasally. "One hopes, from the criminal class, more professional behavior, more pride in one's job."

The young one quipped: "It all goes to show the importance of practicing safe fax."

"Punishment is not welcome here," quoth the Nasal One, "especially the Saxon sort."

"My office is in fiduciary shambles."

"Serves them right for taking cash from agri-business. God protects His agrarian own. Now they're trying to tag my prize pig."

"Stay on subject, Emsworth, but point well taken. This poor country has been taken over by philistine money-changers, who move landmarks and boundary stones and boil down real things into cash value. It is to be expected that ill-gotten gains will make the gainer ill."

"There he goes again: distributism will save us. Let's all read Berry and Chesterbelloc and say the sinners' prayer." The sardonic note struck, he took a long draw on his strawberry frozen fairy-boat.

"Well, you could grow a garden, it wouldn't hurt," the Responsible Member suggested.

"And work? I tried that once, years ago …"

The Punisher interrupted: "Oh, let me guess, it didn't work out."

"My office is low on reserves, too, but no one knows it."

Derisive laughter greeted this pompous display, but soon was muffled by a low note, like a duck with a secret sorrow.

"We're running at a loss, too. We had to raise the membership fees."

"So did we."

"So did we."

"We're losing people."

"So are we."

Morose nods all around. The sipping of beer, froth on the upper lip, except for the gurgle from the empty margarita straw.

"Another round?" More nods.

"Thank God for Africa and the Spanish Main."

The Nasal One riposted: "Well, aren't we the ecumenicist? You sound like Ware and Hart, rolled up in one. Anyways, the Spaniards are with our cousins."

"Still. Thank God."

The one who thought that no one knew muttered "It's the Saracens" into his ouzo. "There's more of them than Anglicans in England. There's probably more Catholics than Anglicans in England. It's like Lepanto never happened. Like Henry never left Catherine's couch."

"And the Wahhabists," Corona said, with urgency, "have planted missile silos in mosques and they are ready to establish sharia law in America. They've already done it in England. We must defend ourselves. We must sound the alarm!"

"Deus lo volt, eh?" marked the Agrarian, who liked GK and suspected the Arabesque, but suspected Crusades even more. "It is really the Assyrians all over again. Our demography is drained by infanticide and the desiccation of the hearth: their demographics have no such subtraction. Ergo, judgment. The sun dies on the West. The Saracens, like the Assyrians, are simply filling a vacuum."

"Well, then, it's the mega-churchers …"

"And the emergents, or emergentists, I can't tell which, pomo's, neo-charismatics, Third and Fourth and Fifth Waves, some nonsense about a golden sword and bare-foot worship praise teams, spaghetti strapped virgins ecstatic in lights."

"Your Walt Whitman impression is just as bad as your accent."

"But surely, you can't deny that our poor country has been sold a bill of goods. The commercial sings with a jingle, take this Readers' Digest Condensed Version – nay, this comic book version, and take it for the real complete thing. Take the advertising and the promotional programming, and call it the gospel. It's easier. More people will go for the production, the soft seats, the theater, the easy message. No one wants smells and bells and two hours worth of it. They are saying that theirs is the real thing, without requiring much difficulty or complexity. Ecstasy without discipline. Spontaneity without order."

"Your time is up. That was an entire paragraph. You were preaching again."

"He's right, you know," the Responsible Member sighed. "It is not a sufficient explanation, but it's true."

"No one wants our product anymore," Margarita shrugged. "We offer tradition, a complete culture and a life rooted in the First Cause …"

"He's been reading Origen again."

"… we offer transcendence, beauty, grace: but all that is wanted is shellac like 'successful living' and 'four spiritual laws.'"

"No one has ever liked the Cross, you know. But this year, no one seems to like the taste of Communion either."

This was getting a bit too naffy for the Corona, who was trying to steer into more manageable waters. "There are too many liberals in our Company. Abortion, gay rights, cohabitation, state-run economy, bail-outs, evolution, female ordination. It's all one."

Groans from all around. "There are too many right-wingers in our Company. Neo-conservative imperialistic war-making, agri-business and energy corporations yanking Washington, economic libertarians masquerading as patriots. It's all one."

The Responsible Member was not one for much passion, but he interfered on occasion: "There are not enough of either, but there are too many banners. There are liberals who are not liberal enough for Love, and conservatives who do not conserve enough of the Earth and Tradition. Our poor country is being lost by one and all. It is lost in the fog of the commercial state and globalization."

The Agrarian was sinking deeper into his cups from this remark, and was turning indiscreet. "I say it's the administration. Not the roll up yonder, of course."

"We've been complaining about that for years. When has this not been the case?"

"No," the Berryite drawled, almost slurred, still smitten from some of the more pessimistic features from Ebenezer Le Page, and feeling the spirit, too. "No, it's different. These gentlemen are addicted to programs and institutions and can't think until a committee says something vacuous with a hundred signatures. What would St. Denys say? Where is the true discernment for the times? Where is the fasting and the vigil? They do more denunciation of peers and conniving for position than they do prayer and theologle, wait, theologolize, no, theologizing."

"That is enough," the Responsible Member said firmly, but not unkindly. "You've had enough."

"I haven't had near enough!" he said with a rising lilt. "I've hit upon a new motto for the administration! A healing motto! A joyful motto!"

"Please, I can't bear the anticipation," the Nasal One said.

"Here it is: Beers for Peers!"

The Corona groaned: "He's about to sing."

Let's all shout a rousing cheer for beer,
And recommend it highly for peers.
For in these fears
It certainly appears
The only way to keep your friends from tears
Is to keep your peers in beer.

The Margarita wanted to point out trouble with meter, form and diction, but on second thought, let the song slip into the annihilation of a single performance.

"Think about it," the doggerelizer continued, without mercy, "Beer is better than phone calls and cranky emails and faxes that burn as soon as they roll out of the machine. Beer is better than conventions and conferences and closed door executive sessions with human sacrifices. Beer is better than pride and elections, better than gluttony and banquets, better than lust, better than anger. Buy all the Persian rugs and gold vessels and scotch and cigars, for it is better than running Our Company as a squamous, metastasizing ecclesiastical version of Goldman Sachs. Lose money, waste money, for God's sake, instead of cheating and hiding with it. Stuffed collars will always fail at the Wall Street game, simply because they're not smart enough, because the Front Office will sabotage their hardware, software and wetware like Babel, and I mean the little gray cells of course."

He choked, and settled. "If you don't pray, then you may as well drink beer. You'll be safer, or at least the people around you will be. Beer is a better, anyways, as a prelude to prayer and dogma than religious gossip that competes with the View for vitriol, or spreadsheets that mystify and reports that stultify."

"Stop him, please, he's rhyming again!" Corona cried.

"That is enough," the Responsible Member said firmly. "I've had enough."

"Do you know why marriages die in this poor country, why the hearth is withering? Because men are not men, and do not embrace their own nature, and do not really love women. Because women have rejected their giftedness and have spurned the interior beauty of the hearth. Because children suck on the paps of an electric god."

"I'm done. I'm sad. I'll go home and tend my garden," said the Agrarian. "It's the only thing I can do now. I pray and pull the weeds, prune the roses. Odysseus is gone and the Order has fallen. I'll follow Laertes into the countryside. At least in my vines I touch substance: there is none of that with the prince of the air. I'll wait for the planting of the oar."

"Stay, my friend. Don't go yet." He rose, and cleared his throat peremptorily. The Drones set down their glasses.

It is odd in the Sunset Grille, with the mass of half-clothed geriatric teenagers on deck, for a dignified septuagenarian to stand in his summer whites and address his table.

The image, though, presented so much of a contrast that it did not register in the minds of the waitresses and the ubiquitous portly males who were attired in tragic short pants, even more tragic muscle shirts with airbrushed advertisements for other bars, and footware prongs that split the ugly toes. Too sozzled by half, they, nor their painted paramours or the wait staff, ever noticed the homiletical moment about to begin.

"Friends," he spoke with gentle words. "We are gathered here at Sunset, and we are, after all, only Drones. Remember our patron, our friend Bertram, Lord Yaxley. Remember our charter in first Corinthians, first chapter, verse the twenty-seventh.

"We are, after all, only fools and children. History is beyond our prediction, and much of it is beyond our understanding and most of it outside our influence. Theology is wondrous fair, but it remains a mystery and a terror. I think it is safest for those who nurture their gardens in land and who tend their flocks by hand. Theologians and scholars without portfolio have ever been dangerous to themselves. Dogma, without the fellowship, will produce schizophrenia.

"I share your feelings about middle management. We must discourage them, with bonhomie, from making serious decisions. They are not at all old enough. They are still too ill-humored, distempered, in a prurient, adolescent sort of way. Their committees and advisers are too much products of culture, too insensate of the insensible. They cannot advise well because they are simply not wise.

"Please, I beg your pardon for these abstractions which rhyme overmuch. I will not bandy names or places here. Suffice it to say that I think there nothing to say, at least for some grand new program of rescue or renewal. Mistakes and poor management abound in these times. Great new ideas for management in our Company and new initiatives always founder on the surf of reality, if you will accept that Time is a tide. Innocent, or less guilty, men are set aside with the guilty who simply had the bad luck to be found out. Less innocent men continue in their desperation to preserve position and structure that have already been stamped obsolete. They were corporate innovations anyways, and deserve little grief.

"You are weary of these matters, and it shows. You have less joy, and your jokes are the poorer for it. Your laughter is more coarse, more pedestrian nowadays. You have dallied with vulgarity. I beg you to stop, and learn good things again.

"I agree with my Agrarian Friend. It is time to love things small, concretely, and with particularity. It is time for silence in the political halls, and to listen, perhaps for years, for the still small voice in the wind.

"There is, for the time being, no Answer forthcoming for our Company's conundrum in this poor country. There is no coherent administration on the horizon, no will there be for the foreseeable future. God has darkened this future from our eyes. There is no Council that will be listened to, with this current set of angry villagers, who are even now lighting their torches.

"There remains only the liturgical year, the feasting and the fasting. There is only the manna and ambrosia, the word of heaven mingling with soul and earth. There is only the One and Three and the Two-Natured Son.

"But I wax rhapsodic and wane into foolish irony. For there is no 'only' with what we have. What we have been given is enough and sufficient. God, I think, is pruning the stalks of the vine that do not produce, and they are withering in front of our faces. Committees, office buildings, treasuries and designated funds, investments, programs, academic ventures, cultural dialogues, various liberations and self-promotions: these are now revealing their insubstantiality.

"Our managers and our particular offices are being dealt severe mercy. The hurtful things, the insubstantial ghosts of things, the dead-ends and potential disasters of things, are being pruned away, while God is silent about the very things about which they clamor Him the most.

"But one morning, finally, they will have no office, no money, no earthly power or influence to do anything else than to run to the Altar for sanctuary, and fast and pray and begin the Liturgy of Peace. They will then have bread for the poor, oil for a joyous face and wine to make glad the heart of man."

He cleared his throat again. His right eye winced, for that part of his head always hurt in such a moment.

"Prune your roses, friends, and tend your vines. Sink your fingers deep in the soil, and to your people be kind. Tell them the stories. Pray. Learn better jokes.

"For the day is fast approaching and perhaps is already here. The Lord is marching again toward Jerusalem. He looks at our Company in this poor country, and He searches for figs. He looks for fruit and will He find it? What do you think that fruit is? More offices? More coffers? More members? Better, more professional academics? Better test results on dogmatic and rubrical questionnaires?"

The old fool's voice was tremulous now, and almost attracted notice from the next table of barbarians.

"No, no, and five other no's. We cannot give Him theology, for He gave that to us. All we can give Him, as His foolish children, is prayer. Prayer is the only choice and chance we have, the only fig we can give."

He sat down. Silence in the sunset on the sound enveloped the table, and shimmered for a few dramatic beats.

The Nasal One waited for a moment, then fulfilled his office.

"The next meeting will be held at the six-mile marker on the last evening of next month …"

"Hurrah!" said Corona. "A farrago!"

"… in the woods, my dear, the rigor might be challenging.

"In any case, let us stand and recite our secret gnosis, the real etymology of our Patron's Name ..."

They all sang, regrettably:

"On a tree by a river a little tom-tit
    Sang 'Willow, titwillow, titwillow!'
And I said to him, 'Dicky-bird, why do you sit
    Singing "Willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?' I cried,
'Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?'
With a shake of his poor little head he replied,
    'Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!'

"Raise your glass to all bishops who rightly divide the word of truth, and a hearty toast to Ryan O'Neal."

"Be sure to send Yaxley the check. He's picking up the bill."

Comments

[Eric John (PNW)]

Astonishing! Alas, we need a Jeeves to get us out of our predicament, but then he is unlikely to be found at the Drones Club.

Fortunately we have One even better to guide us wayward lambs.

In Xp,

- Eric John