It’s four in the morning and Benny’s council is awake and discussing the day’s strategy while watching him engage in a series of elaborate “warrior poses” that, he claims, help him to maintain a flexible body, mind, and spirit.
When he stands on one foot and points his left index finger toward the sky, his mistress Carmelina says to the rest of the council, “There’s something sexy about a man who believes that he’s making the world better by posing like a stork!”
“I don’t know about sexy,” says Geronimo, his chief adviser. “But it’s rare that someone who looks more like an uncoordinated baboon than a warrior can still inspire us to believe that, together, we can defeat the long arm of the Spanish Empire and create a unified South America.”
*****
After finishing his poses, Benny sits with his council members and discusses the address that he’ll make today to a crowd of fifty-thousand at the Coliseum in Lima. “Is it really necessary to wrestle a tiger with no armor and your bare hands?” asks Carmelina.
Benny laughs. “Freedom is won on the battlefield of ideas. Our words have captured people’s imaginations. Now the slaying of a tiger will capture their hearts!”
Benny stands and begins to wrestle an imaginary tiger. His arms flail, his teeth grind, his eyes focus on an invisible enemy, and he tosses himself through the air. His council members watch his elaborate dance, with jaws agape, and remember why they’re here.
“He believes,” Carmelina will write, later that day. “And despite his ugly facial features, diminutive frame, eccentric behaviors, and youthful idealism, he inspires others to believe. This inspiration, for me, makes life again worth living!”
*****
When Benny finishes wrestling his imaginary tiger, he sips a banana, lemon, and rotten squirrel meat tea. The tea smells so bad that he holds his nose as he pours it down his throat. But he doesn’t mind holding his nose. Because he read somewhere that matter is no match for the mind!
Rotten squirrel meat, he tells his council, will make him strong because he thinks it will! Which is a nice thought… but not a nice smell. “It’s not the tea that we oppose,” a council-member wrote in an anonymous note left on his hammock this morning. “It’s your farts. They’re… distracting!”
Benny was too inspired when he awoke this morning to notice the note. Which is unfortunate for his council members because he just farted again. Silent, but not unnoticed. “Benny!” they scream, in unison, as they pull shirts over their faces and run for cover.
“It wasn’t me… I swear!”
I love this series. They make me smile and imagine!