OCR Text |
Show Acting Alone pa g e 34 out back. Spikey was showing his cousin and her weird giant sidekick his three-and-a-half foot long, hotdog-shaped, prize yam. "I grew this," he said solemnly, waving it in Shannon's face like a flag. He was quite obviously trying, in his inarticulate, animalistic way, to reveal the poignant effects upon his character of fourteen months of captivity and of coming home only to be chewed up and spit out by The Media (evil eye cast up at Sam). Spikey was displaying his new, sadder, wiser sense of values. Apparently no longer interested in being a mere cog in America's imperialistic machine, Spikey was a self-determined yamfarmer now, his new identtity. His big yam was something permanent that he tried to cling to now, along with the soil, his farming heritage. It was obviously a delayed shock reaction, something purely metabolic - but noble, Sam supposed, in a Grampappy-Amos-'n-the-girls-'n-the-boys sort of way. Old Sam, who'd decided to go the dexamil route to pacify Shannon, and had sampled some himself on the way up here (for increased road safety; of course), accidentally let his mind and mouth overreact to this amazing yam stuff and wander a bit out of the way. He was dimly conscious that hundreds of thousands of samolians in publishers' advances were hanging in the balance here, so he tried his utmost best to censor himself. He did not want to offend this walking gold mine. As that yam throbbed in his face, Sam conscientiously did not say the first thing that came into his mind, which was: "You grew this? Really? How weird! How'd you manage that?" (reaching out to touch yam in fascination - then, light dawns) "-ohhh, I see. From the soil you grew this. I thought you meant that you yourself grew it. |