JUMP TO PART II, THE TEDIOUS PLOT DEVELOPMENT
JUMP TO PART III, THE THRILLING CONCLUSION
"Tell us a story, Grampa!" said Billy.
"Yeah! A story!" echoed Kevin around a mouthful of his third s'more. He waved his sticky hands in the air. "Make it a scary one!"
Grampa grunted and threw another stick on the fire. "Your mother doesn't like it when I tell you scary stories," he said. "And I don't want to get in trouble. Why, she'd tan my hide."
Billy and Kevin giggled at the idea of Grampa getting a spanking. "You can't get in trouble," said Kevin. "You're Grampa!"
"Well, all right," said Grampa. "Have I ever told you the story of Kilgore Trout?"
"Uh uh," said Billy. "Is he a monster?"
"No," said Grampa. "Kilgore Trout was -- is -- a man. A long, long time ago, he lived in Denver, not too far from where you two and your mom and dad live now. In the daytime, he worked at an unsatisfying job where he had move pieces of paper around and wasn't allowed to surf the Internet. At night, he alternated between reading self-help books and sitting in the bathtub with the lights off, rocking back and forth and listening to Linkin Park's
Hybrid Theory album on repeat. And at night he cried himself to sleep."
"I thought crying was for girls," said Kevin.
"Well, it is," said Grampa, "but Kilgore Trout was very sensitive. Also, he was a major pussy. Anyway, one day Kilgore Trout stopped coming to work. He stopped calling his friends. He stopped spending entire Saturdays at SuperTarget, walking up and down the aisles and eye-groping the pretty girls doing their grocery shopping, but never working up the courage to say so much as 'You like Cheerios? I like Cheerios!' So all of Kilgore Trout's friends -- well, both of them -- got very worried and let themselves in to his apartment. And there they found..."
"What was it, Grampa?" said Billy, his eyes wide. "Did he overdose on smack?"
"Hell, no," said Grampa. "Where would a paper pusher like Kilgore Trout get enough money for the kind of high-grade shit you need to kill yourself? No, what they found was all of Kilgore Trout's stuff exactly where it had always been. Running shoes by the door.
Run Lola Run poster hung inexpertly on the wall. Astroglide in the bedside table, top drawer. But no Kilgore Trout. He had vanished, like
Alex Winter's career."
"Where'd he go, Grampa?" asked Billy.
"Well, nobody knows for sure," said Grampa. "Some say he went to the Canadian Rockies. Others think he hid in the Amazon rain forest. And some think he fled to the steppes of Siberia. But one thing is for sure -- nobody saw Kilgore Trout for seven years."
"I'm seven, Grampa," said Kevin, holding up seven fingers.
"That's right, my boy," said Grampa, chuckling and ruffling his grandson's hair. "Kilgore Trout disappeared for as long as you've been alive! But he came back. Seven years to the day after he left, Kilgore Trout reappeared in downtown Denver. And he was a fright! He hadn't cut his hair or shaved his face or bathed the entire time he was gone. Those who were at the corner of Blake and 16th Street that day say his eyes were wild -- the eyes of a man who had fought grizzly bears to a draw and chased down antelope and killed them with his teeth and bare hands. His hair was matted and dirty, and his beard hung down to his waist and was filled with fleas and maggots. He wore crude clothing stitched together from animal hides. He was so filthy that not even the homeless people panhandling on 16th Street Mall wanted to go near him, and a crowd gathered to stare, although they kept their distance because he smelled so bad. And then Kilgore Trout spoke."
"What'd he say, Grampa?" said Kevin, tugging at his grandfather's sleeve.
"He said, 'Free mayonnaise,'" said Grampa.
"Free mayonnaise?" said Kevin.
"He was gone for seven years and all he brought back was mayonnaise?" said Billy.
"Well, that's what the people in the crowd thought," said Grampa. "But Kilgore Trout kept repeating himself, saying 'Free mayonnaise. Free mayonnaise. Free mayonnaise,' over and over again, and they could see that as dirty as Kilgore Trout was, the jar of mayonnaise he was holding out was pure and clean and white. There was a young man in the crowd who was eating a turkey club sandwich, and on a dare from his friends, he stepped out and said, 'Sure, I'll take some free mayonnaise.' And he put a little on his sandwich and took a bite."
"Did he die, Grampa?" asked Billy. "Mommy says we're not supposed to take anything from strangers, even if they offer us beer and pornography."
"Your mommy wants you to grow up to be a mincing little wuss, I guess," said Grampa. "No, he didn't die. He ate the bite of sandwich with the mayonnaise on it, and then, without saying a word, he put more on his sandwich and ate it. Then he grabbed the jar from Kilgore Trout and started smearing huge globs of mayonnaise on that turkey club, and he gobbled it down as if he hadn't eaten in a week. And when he finished he licked his fingers and said, 'That's the best motherfucking mayonnaise I ever ate.'"
"I don't like mayonnaise," said Kevin, wrinkling his nose. "It tastes like smegma."
"You don't understand," said Grampa. "This was the creamiest, freshest, most delicious mayonnaise anyone had ever tasted, and it turned the condiment industry upside down. Within months, U.S. mayonnaise consumption went up 3,000%, and almost all of that was KT Mayonnaise, even though it cost three times as much. People didn't just put it on sandwiches and in egg salad -- they ate it plain, sometimes right out of the jar. Ice cream trucks sold KT Mayonnaisicles. Food experts identified no fewer than seventeen distinct levels of flavor in KT Mayonnaise, and doctors found that if you smeared the stuff in the right places, you could cure diseases from lung cancer to erectile dysfunction to social anxiety disorder. And a popular sitcom was built around a black midget saying 'That's tasty like KT Mayonnaise!'"
"But Grampa," said Billy, "if KT Mayonnaise was so good, how come they don't make it anymore?"
"I thought you might ask that," said Grampa. "Let me tell you about Lizzie Hellman."
"You mean like Hellman's Mayonnaise, Grampa?" asked Billy.
"That's right, Billy," said Grampa. "Lizzie Hellman was the great-granddaughter of Richard Hellman, who sold the first ready-made mayonnaise at his New York delicatessen in 1905. Before Kilgore Trout, Hellman's Mayonnaise was the best-selling mayonnaise in the country, but not long after KT Mayonnaise hit the shelves, the only people still eating Hellman's were faggots and fairies."
"Aren't faggots and fairies the same thing, Grampa?" said Kevin.
"Good catch, son!" said Grampa. "I meant to say 'faggots and commies.' Anyway, every day that people ate KT Mayonnaise, Lizzie Hellman was losing millions. So one night, she sneaked into the Kilgore Trout's factory, hoping to learn why KT Mayonnaise was so tasty. Now, this was no ordinary factory. Kilgore Trout had built it in the desolate wastelands of eastern Colorado, and it was protected by electrical fences and war elephants and Imperial Stormtroopers and a moat filled with killer manatees. Nobody ever went in, and nobody ever came out. Kilgore Trout lived there, and no one ever saw him, even though he was worth billions of dollars by then, and could have had any large-nosed, small-breasted woman he wanted. He was the Howard Hughes of mayonnaise."
"Which is correct, Grampa?" asked Kevin. "Is it 'sneaked' or 'snuck'?"
"Both are correct, actually," said Grampa. "Nobody knows how Lizzie Hellman got past the mayonnaise factory's elaborate external security, but once she got inside, she found that the factory, which appeared to be only one story high, went twenty stories deep underground. Lizzie Hellman had to fight past dozens of armed guards and genetically enhanced attack animals, killing them with weapons she found in the stairwells and using randomly scattered medical kits to heal her wounds. At the end of each level, she had to fight a larger, tougher boss guard before she could move down to the next floor. And when she reached the deepest part of the factory, she defeated Kilgore Trout himself, who had had his arms replaced with plasma cannons and rocket launchers mounted on his hips."
"Did she kill him, Grampa?" said Billy.
"No, Billy," said Grampa. "She was about to, but Kilgore Trout threw down a smoke grenade and escaped in a great glass flying elevator. And then Lizzie Hellman learned the awful secret behind KT Mayonnaise."
"What was it, Grampa?" cried Billy and Kevin in unison, clutching each other.
"It was people," said Grampa. "KT Mayonnaise was made of people."
For a few moments all was silent save the crackling of the campfire.
"Grampa?" said Billy, "If Kilgore Trout escaped, where did he go?"
"Well," said Grampa, smiling, "they found the elevator a month later, crash-landed in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. But they never caught Kilgore Trout. And they never found his body."
"But
we're in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness," said Kevin. "That's Mt. Harvard over there." He pointed.
"You're right, Kevin," said Grampa softly. "And some say he still haunts these woods, looking for little boys to make into mayonnaise."
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