George W. Bush and the Sorceror's Stone

Emaleneangel: Once again, I don't own anything

The Impatient Cow

Nearly ten years had passed since the Halls had woken up to find their cousin on the front step, but Manor Rd. had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front lawns and lit up the brass numbers over the Hall's garage door, it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Hall had seen that fateful news report about the prairie dogs. Only the photographs on the mantel piece revealed how much time had passed. Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets--but Hampton Hall was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a game of football with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that another boy lived at the house.

Yet George Bush was still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. Mary Hall was awake and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.

"Up! Get up! Now!"

George woke with a start. She rapped on the door again.

"Up!" she screeched. George heard her walking toward the kitchen and the sound of the frying pan being slammed on the stove. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream that he had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had a funny feeling he'd had the same dream before.

Mrs. Hall was back outside the door.

"Are you up yet?" she demanded.

"Nearly," said George.
"Well, get a move on. I want you to look after the gravy. And don't you dare let it curdle. I want everything perfect on Hammy's birthday."

George groaned.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing, nothing..."

Hampton's birthday--how could he have forgotten? George got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his bed and, after shrieking and shaking a squirming spider out, put them on. George should have been used to spiders, the outhouse where he slept was full of them, but he could never quite stomach their rapidly moving legs.

When he was dressed he went down the hall into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all of Hampton's birthday presents. It looked as though Hampton had gotten the new video games he had wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike. Exactly why Hampton wanted a racing bike was a mystery to George as Hampton was very fat and hated exercise--unless of course it involved punching somebody. Hampton's favorite punching bag was George, but he rarely caught him. George may not have looked it, but he was fast.

Mr. Hall entered the kitchen as George was stirring the gravy. Smoke hissed with every turn of the spoon.

"Comb your hair!" he barked, by way of a morning greeting.

About once a week, Ralph Hall looked over the top of his newspaper and shouted that George needed a haircut. George must have had more haircuts than the rest of the boys in class combined, but it made no difference. His hair simply grew all over the place.

George was frying up ham and bacon by the time Hampton arrived in the kitchen with his mother. Hampton looked a lot like his father. He had a large pink face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes, and thick sandy hair that lay smoothly on his fat head. Mary Hall often said that Hampton looked like an angel--George often said that he looked like a transvestite pig.

George put the eggs, bacon, ham, pancakes, biscuits, and gravy on the table, which was difficult as there wasn't much room. Hampton meanwhile, was counting his presents. His face fell.

"Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his mother and father. "That's two less than last year."

"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Sandra's present, see, it's here under this big one from Mommy and Daddy."

"All right, thirty seven then," said Hampton, going purple in the face. George, who could see a huge tantrum coming on, began wolfing down hi bacon as fast a possible in case Hampton turned the table over.

Mrs. Hall obviously sensed the danger too, because she said quickly, "And we'll buy you another two presents while we're at the baseball game today. How's that, my prince? Two more presents. Is that alright?"

Hampton thought for a moment. His face scrunched up under the intense concentration. "So I'll have thirty...thirty..."

"Thirty-nine, angel," said Mrs. Hall.

"Oh." Hampton sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest package. "Fine."

Ralph Hall chuckled.

"The kid wants his money's worth, just like his father. Thata boy, Hampton?" He ruffled Hampton's hair.

George had never really been a sports fan (whenever Mr. Hall watched them on the T.V. he wound up in a decidedly bad mood and usually broke something that George was forced to fix) but there was something distinctly different about watching it live. The smell of freshly mown grass, the crack of a bat as it made contact, but most of all the emotion of the crowd as it rose and fell with each passing play, taking George along with it. In fact everyone was so wrapped up in the game that the Halls and Hampton's friend Richard completely forgot about George until half time.

"Take this and meet us back here in fifteen minutes. Now remember, don't cause any trouble," said Ralph Hall, handing George a dollar as they filed out to the concession stands.

"I'm not going to do anything," grumbled George. But Ralph didn't believe him. No one ever did.

For about ten seconds George was ecstatic over his rare bout of freedom. Normally the Halls were too nervous that he would do something, but they must have figured that in such a large group of people no one would notice a poorly clothed pre-adolescent. His happiness dissipated however the moment he laid eyes on the menus. Fries alone were a dollar sixty, not to mention what a drink and burger would cost. His stomach rumbling George pushed the crisp bill into the woman's hand and asked for a small coke.

With ten minutes left before he had to meet back up with the Halls, George decided to roam around the panoply of sights and sounds. Children screamed for souvenirs, teenage girls made eyes at teenage boys, and the sound of hundreds of flushing toilets echoed like ambient music around the cemented curve.

"Make it move," whined an all too familiar voice pointing at a rather large cow. George quickly hid behind a man with a fanny pack. Sure enough it was Hampton and his father standing in front a glass case filled with cows. Ralph tapped on the glass but it didn't move. Bobby Joe's Fresh Beef blinked in red neon above them. A woman to Hampton's left pointed out one of the cows and the man behind the counter quickly rushed to the stall and coaxed the cow out with some grass. George couldn't help but turn away as the man started to tie the cow's legs together.

"Do it again," Hampton ordered. Ralph complied, but once again nothing happened. "This is boring," Hampton groaned, and then shuffled away, his father in his wake.

Intrigued, George finally stepped out from his hiding spot. Walking forward, he pressed his hand gently against the glass in front of the cow Hampton had been bothering. The cow suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it stood until its eyes were on level with George's.

It winked.

George stared. Then he looked quietly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. He looked back at the cow and winked too. The cow jerked its head to where Hampton and Mr. Hall were standing in line. It gave George a look that said, quite plainly, "I get that all the time."

"I know. It must get really annoying."

The cow nodded vigorously.

"What's your name, anyways?"

The cow jabbed its head at the little sign next to the glass. 'Old Blue. Bovine from Brazil.'

"I didn't know that they ate male cows."

"Oh real sensitive," squealed the cow, much to George's shock. He jumped slightly, but upon seeing that no one else was paying attention, he turned back to the cow. "Not only does he point out that I'm about to be eaten, he tells me I look like a steer."

"I'm sorry, really. It's just I thought Old Blue was a boy's name."

"Well my owner had six daughters. He was sick of the estrogen and decided to name me after the son he never had."

"Oh," replied George dumbly, as if that explained everything. A deafening shout sounded behind George and made them both jump. "HAMPTON! MR. HALL. COME AND SEE THIS COW! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING."

Hampton came waddling over to them as fast as he could.

"Move," he huffed, elbowing George out of the way. Caught by surprise, George fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast that no one saw how it happened--one second, Hampton and Richard were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.

George sat up and gasped; the glass from the cow's tank had vanished. The cow daintily stepped out onto the floor. People throughout the concession area screamed at the herbivore and ran towards the exits.

As the cow walked slowly past him, she turned to George and said, "Rio, here I come. Gracias amigo."

"Wait a sec," cried George, standing up. "I thought you were from Brazil."

"Um...yes." The cow stopped uneasily, but people continued to rush by in abject horror.

"They don't speak Spanish in Brazil. They speak Portuguese." For several moments the cow's eyes shifted back and forth. Suddenly she sprang forth and darted out of the stadium as fast as her obese figure and spindly legs could carry her.

Mrs. Hall simply refused to stay for the rest of the game, saying that if the place couldn't even keep its livestock in place then how in the world were they to feel safe from flying bats or the colored population that congregated. Hampton and Richard, despite their initial fear could only gibber. As far as George had seen, the cow hadn't done anything except playfully snap at their elbows as it passed, but by the time they were all back in the Hall's car, Hampton was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Richard was swearing it had tried to decapitate him with her razor sharp tail. But worst of all, for George at least, was Richard calming down enough to say, "George was talking to it, weren't you?"

Mr. Hall waited until Richard was safely out of the house before starting in on George. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, "Go--outhouse--no meals," before he collapsed on the LazyBoy, and Mrs. Hall had to run and get him a large beer.

George lay in his dark outhouse much later, wishing he had a watch. He didn't know what time it was and he couldn't be sure the Halls were asleep yet. Until they were, he couldn't risk sneaking inside to get some food.

He'd lived with the Halls almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as he could remember, ever since he'd been a baby and his parents had been freakishly decapitated by a tilt-a-whirl. He couldn't remember being in the tilt-a-whirl when his parents had died. Sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his outhouse, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of red light and a burning pain on his forehead. This, he supposed, was the accident, though he couldn't imagine where all the red light came from. He couldn't remember his parents at all. The Halls never spoke about them, and of course it was forbidden to ask questions. There were no photographs of them in the house.

When he had been younger, George had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Halls were his only family. Yet sometimes he thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet cowboy hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Mrs. Hall and Hampton. After asking George furiously if he knew the man, Mrs. Hall had rushed out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily to him on a bus. A bald man in a very long sequin coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second George tried to get a closer look.