This is the story of Forrester Zyme – accused of committing a frivolous crime. Yet his faux pas produced a grief so sublime he was able to see truth for the very first time.

“I’m sorry,” he said in the most repentant of tones, though his statement was met with dismissive groans. “To prove it to you,” he glanced to Mick Jones, “I shall donate my body, and start with the bones.”

“You can’t do that!” laughed Mary Lou Ross, cradling a doll; body covered in moss. She’d applied rouge to the doll, gave her lips a bright gloss, then fastened a beard of embroidery floss. 

Forrester’d never seen such a peculiar doll and wondered by what name Mary Lou did call… her. She smiled at him, leaned against the wall, then said to him boldly, “With no bones, you will fall.” 

“Donate your body to what?” asked old Mick, finishing the question with an odd-sounding click. “Donating your bones sounds downright sick. What you should really donate is your worthless, old…”  

“Mick!” scolded Cassie, a graduate from Vassar who received the stink eye from Mick as he passed her. Cassie looked ominous, hair slick with maccasar; nobody told her it looked a disaster. 

When Mick came to town she’d been overjoyed, now he slept on her couch broke and underemployed. Her youth and her beauty, long since destroyed, she often felt chained to this human hemorrhoid. 

“Watch how you speak around young Mary Lou!” she yelled as Mick flipped her the bird, bid adieu. Cassie turned to Forrester, his eyes sparkled blue. He glanced at Mary Lou, his expression anew.  

“Without my bones, you say I’ll collapse.” She nodded and said, “Between your muscles, only gaps.”Outside he heard three rolling thunderclaps. “Should I change my plan then?” She shrugged. “Perhaps.”

So Forrester Zyme reversed his set course and for his donation, he found a new source. He kept his bones and instead reinforced an abiding importance of love, kindness, and resource… fulness.

“For so long I’ve been a selfish taker, a snollygoster, mooncalf, and a first-rate faker. But now my values will be that of a Quaker,” he said in a speech he gave at Cook’s Acre. 

The picnic that day was the grandest affair. Forrester made sure Mary Lou would be there. The smell of sweet jasmine filled the air and Cassie wore earrings and jewels in her hair. 

Cassie neared Forrester and pulled him aside. Mary Lou followed, loyalty bonafide. “It’s great you’re taking this all in great stride. But come with me now. Let’s take a ride.”

The trio departed from Cook’s Acre gala and headed to Cassie’s sky-blue Impala. “What I’m about to say may seem a mere falla… cy,” she began as they drove past Red Calla.

“The crime you committed was far from hideous, and those who disagree are simply idiots. Our neighbors’ poor reaction makes me pity us. Picking flowers is hardly insidious!”

He looked to Mary Lou who clearly agreed. “I know for a fact that flowers don’t bleed. Donating your bones would have been a nice deed, but they really are something you very much need.”

Forrester felt the warmth of their love; Cassie, Mary Lou and a little white dove who’d descended from the bright skies high above to land softly upon his freshly pressed glove. 

He would bid farewell to the Quaker life, keep all his bones and make Cassie his wife! With Mary Lou’s laughter, the joy would be rife. Hell, he’d finally learn how to play the fife. 

The world seemed suddenly fair and right. At long last he had completed his plight. With the three of them he would be alright, his life filled with nothing but sheer delight. 

Then a dark character straight out of Scorsese entered the scene, shook his head, and said, “Crazy. To think flowers don’t hurt or bleed is just lazy.” The voice belonged to one rebel daisy. 

“How could you be so obviously dafter!” he yelled before getting blown sky high off a rafter. No one heard him over all of the laughter and Forrester lived happily ever after. 

*(No excerpts this week)