volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

Roy wonders what they were laughing at.
“Twoseventyfive?”
He manages to return his attention to the young, blonde girl
with the cold, round eyes.
Carefully, for it contains his lasagna, he sets the plastic
Safeway bag onto the man-made tan countertop. She watches
him do this with muted rage. Relieved of his foil-wrapped
burden, Roy next removes the thick, woolen glove from his right
hand. This he also places on the tan countertop, still filled with
the warmth and shape of his personal hand and, of course, his
personal odor. The girl’s nose crinkles. She fights the urge
to wrinkle her brow. As if out in the world for the first time,
blissfully unaware there are others who require her ministrations,
Roy grubs in his pocket, deeper and deeper; perhaps so deeply
that, when his hand reappears, it will be clutching Yuan notes
issued by the People’s Republic of China.
It seems to take Roy the lifetime of a gastrotrich.
Gastrotrichs are a phylum of microscopic animal found in
fresh water. They are bilaterally symmetric, and have a complete
gut. Their locomotion is primarily powered by hydrostatics, and
they reproduce entirely by parthenogenesis. They are also the
shortest-lived animals known, their entire life-span lasting only
three days.
Which is exactly how long it seems to take Roy to find his
money—three days, or the lifetime of a gastrotrich.
The money he finally wrings from his pocket is not Chinese at
all, but a familiar green adorned with a famous male dominator
(Andrew Jackson, author of the Indian Removal Act of 1830).
He peels the twenty from its sordid fellows and it flutters onto
the tan countertop.
The change has been made in her blonde, ponytailed mind
for the last two-and-a-half days. The dirty bill is in her hand
almost before it alights. After the transaction is complete, she
will wash her hands vigorously, but for now all she can think of is
a-ten-a-five-two-ones-and-a-quarter. A-ten-a-five-two-ones-anda-quarter.
Atenafivetwoonesandaquarter.
No, she does not place the change directly into Roy’s
102 ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY