DAREDEVIL DIVER OF PITTSBURGH
WANTS TO JUMP OFF YOUR BRIDGE, read the Wartburg Daily.
MAKE YOUR BETS, WARTBURG
DICK OLIVE IS COMING TO YOU
AND HE’S AT LEAST SIX FOOT FOUR!
An engraving below the ad depicted a pillar of muscle, hands on hips, stuffed into a pair of striped bathing shorts. The head (this is important) was bald. Radial lines indicated it had recently been polished.
A bit of goblin in him.
When they opened their papers that morning, sixty-seven wives of Wartburg and fifty-two husbands choked on their livermush.
A rash of naughtiness followed.
Archabbot Boniface drowned eleven cats.
War amputees shot walnuts at women and children.
Druggists stoned the meeting-house for Laudanum Addicts Anonymous.
When is Dick Olive coming? Wartburgians demanded of the newspapermen. How long can this go on?
§
He arrived on the 10 o’clock mail train the following Sunday morning. Pastors were abandoned at the pulpit.
As soon as his heeled slippers hit the platform, Dick Olive was assaulted with a spray of silver coins. Bruises sprang up on his hairless shins. His handler, Mr. D.H. Pimento, shielded him with a waxed overcoat.
All anyone could glimpse of Dick Olive were the brass buckles of his slippers that tinkled as he stepped over their savings.
The crowd followed him to the hostel run by the Widow Snurge, who stored him in the attic to discourage any peepers.
Hours after the couple repaired, Mr. Pimento flung open the attic shutters and addressed the crowd that had spilled out into the neighbor’s cabbage field below.
ESTEEMED PEOPLE OF WARTBURG, he shouted. HEED MY WORDS: DICK OLIVE WILL NOT DIVE TODAY.
Why not? the people cried.
AT LEAST TWO TORNADOES, Mr. Pimento announced. It was true, there had been more than one, but no one had minded.
YES, TORNADOES HAVE WHIPPED UP YOUR RIVER INTO A CHURNING GYRE. NOW KINDLY COLLECT THE COINS OUT OF THE MUD AND PUT THEM IN MY PIGGYBANK. he said, as he lowered it down on a rope.
IF THE PIG IS HEAVY ENOUGH TO BREAK THE ROPE, WE WILL NEGOTIATE IN THE MORNING. NOW DISPERSE!
Mr. Pimento closed the shutters seconds before they were pelted with cabbages.
We just can’t stand it anymore! the people of Wartburg cried. They were so worked up that they burned down the mayor’s mansion before they went home for dinner.
§
The next morning, the people of Wartburg gathered again outside the Widow Snurge’s hostel. Before them lay the shattered remnants of Mr. Pimento’s piggybank. It overflowed with silver and other offerings: a goat roasted with apples, a flawless set of teeth, freshly extracted, and several unwed daughters strapped to a parlor sofa.
The crowd teemed among the cabbages, scratching savagely under their corsets. There was one thought in their heads: Would Dick Olive jump today? Was today the day they would finally gaze upon his striped bathing shorts?
NO, said Mr. Pimento, flinging open the shutters. ESTEEMED PEOPLE OF WARTBURG, DICK OLIVE WILL NOT DIVE TODAY.
But why? the people cried. There are no tornadoes anywhere!
BECAUSE HE IS BRUISED, said Mr. Pimento. HE WAS BRUISED BY YOU, YOU WERE TOO ROUGH WITH HIM, AND NOW HE IS BLACK AND BLUE.
HE WILL ONLY JUMP OFF YOUR BRIDGE IF HE IS IN PERFECT CONDITION, Mr. Pimento said.
But the thought of Dick Olive’s body covered in bruises that the crowd themselves had inflicted only excited them more.
The Widow Snurge stood in her rose border and watched the emboldened crowd swarm. They were already ripping the shingles off of her hostel, and soon they would get down to the studs.
IF YOU’RE NOT GONNA GIVE HIM TO US, GIVE US A STORY, the Widow yelled.
WHAT KIND OF STORY? yelled Mr. Pimento.
I DON’T KNOW, A STORY ABOUT PITTSBURGH!
Pittsburgh? said Mr. Pimento. I don’t think they have stories there. Let me think.
But Mr. Pimento, who was born and raised in that great city, couldn’t think of a thing.
THAT’S BECAUSE IT DOESN’T EXIST, the crowd spat. WE KNEW IT DIDN’T. PITTSBURGH IS FAKE AND SO IS YOUR DAREDEVIL DIVER.
PITTSBURGH IS REAL! shouted Mr. Pimento.
PROVE IT, shouted the crowd.
WELL I CAN’T PROVE IT, shouted Mr. Pimento. BUT IT’S NOT THE KIND OF PLACE SOMEONE WOULD MAKE UP.
IF YOU CAN’T PROVE IT, THEN WE HAVE NO CHOICE. WE’RE COMING IN!
The Widow Snurge ran to barricade the door, but her neighbors plowed her down, mashing mud and cabbage into her toothless mouth.
Then they stormed the stairwell and exploded into the attic, where their greedy fingers finally found their master.
§
Only one bridge crossed the Wartburg river, that river stained yellow with stinky invasive snails, which gently washed its banks with a decadent, acid foam, yes! Just one bridge connected the bottomlands of Wartburg to the offensive cliff town of Mars Hill.
It was true the tornadoes had withdrawn into the sky, but the winds that whipped against the railroad bridge suggested a new one might descend any minute.
The crowd had carried Dick Olive, crouching atop his hostel mattress in a robe emblazoned with little stars, to the top track of that double-decker bridge. Then they retreated down to the banks to watch.
ALRIGHT, DICK OLIVE. THE MAIL TRAIN IS DUE TO CROSS THIS BRIDGE IN THIRTY SECONDS. NOW, WE’VE GIVEN YOU OUR MONEY AND OUR BEST SET OF TEETH AND SEVERAL UNWED DAUGHTERS TIED TO A PARLOR SOFA, AND WE EXPECT ONLY ONE THING IN RETURN, the crowd said. DROP YOUR STAR-SPANGLED ROBE, DICK OLIVE, AND SHOW US YOUR STRIPED BATHING SHORTS!
What happened next can hardly be printed here: Ten trembling fingers tugged at the knot of the robe. They parted the fabric from a broad, hairless chest and flicked it with a flourish atop two stunning feet.
The crowd feasted upon the figure of Dick Olive, his pale muscles pocked with purple bruises, his nipples hard enough to etch commemorative china. The stripes on his shorts snaked across their burden.
Sunlight glinted off his head and burned the outline of his shapely skull into their retinas forever.
Then he raised his arms high and leapt headfirst from the bridge. The perfect line of his body tore a hole in the river’s foamy surface. There was no splash.
The 10 o’clock mail train barreled past.
Everyone watching had bitten through their own lips. They realized, too late, that they hadn’t wanted Dick Olive to jump off a bridge at all—they had only wanted to witness his beauty.
Eight seconds passed and his head did not reappear. Then the lamentations began.
WHERE THE FUCK IS DICK OLIVE, the crowd screamed.
DICK!!! DICK OLIVE!!!!
GOD, TAKE MY STEPSON INSTEAD!!!
Several among them rushed back to the Widow Snurge’s hostel to free Mr. Pimento, who’d been hogtied with curtain tassels.
Tell us this has happened before, in the other rivers he’s jumped in, the people begged.
He hasn’t jumped in any rivers before, said Mr. Pimento. This was just a test run for Memphis, where the real money is.
At the river bank, Mr. Pimento commandeered a small boat and began pulling objects to the surface with a dragnet, hoping to retrieve the body.
What’s all this stuff in here? Mr. Pimento said. He’d already recovered several sewing machines, a wicker perambulator, and the first patented mechanical reaper. The collected weight of these treasures began to sink his ship.
It’s our custom in Wartburg to throw our valuables off this bridge, his companions explained. Things that are too good to be used or even seen. Last year, a Palladian post office intended for the other Wartburg was shipped here by mistake. It had twenty-four Doric columns and a gold-leaf coffered dome. We couldn’t allow it on our soil, so we blew up the barge it was on.
Maybe Dick Olive can be its postman, they said dreamily.
Listen, perverts! Mr. Pimento said, throttling the nearest Wartburgian over the side of the boat. I don’t care what you do in your own time, but if your river sank my Dick Olive, you’re going to pay for it. You’re not getting rid of me until he comes back, and if I’m here another second, I’ll burn Wartburg to the ground!
§
But it began to rain. The rain snuffed out the lanterns held by the wives who marched on the banks of the river, calling out softly, Dick? Dick Olive? just as it washed out every torch Mr. Pimento threw into the windows of their children’s bedrooms.
Perhaps Dick Olive had drifted downriver and taken shelter in a cave on the bluffs, the people of Wartburg suggested, or climbed the cliff to the offensive town of Mars Hill, where he grew out his hair and pursued an honest living.
Several chickens went missing in the following days, which supported the theory that a fugitive was hiding among them.
But soon Mr. Pimento stopped searching for his charge.
He gambled away his money with the Bavarian widows at the Schafkopf table, and sheltered in the burned-out mansion of the former mayor, which, although roofless, provided meaningful resistance against the tornadoes.
Mr. Pimento held several rounds of auditions for a replacement act, but all of the town’s young men dove headfirst into the river without a splash, just as Dick Olive had, never to resurface.