Bill Burrup, a Grimmoir

"BULL" BURRUP; a Grimmoir

by Allen Gristle

edited by mark worden

Toddlers are taking over. O-
ver! Sabbath belling. Snoods converge
on a weary-daring man.
--John Berryman

The first time I saw Bull Burrup (Wilbur Seukus Burrup III, Harvard '38) was when I was scheming to indite obscenities on the wall of the faculty lounge at Colombia University. Bull came lurching down the street. His arms and knees flopped akimbo Like one afflicted with some form of muscular degenerative disease.

His knees finally gave out, buckled. He sank to the sidewalk. Fifty-seven apathetic New Yorkers gazed on in utter indifference as Burrup gasped out an agonized barely-articulate plea for help.

At first the sound reminded me of a mantra I had picked up on the West Coast. But then I was jolted from this reverie by the fascinating cyanotic hue beginning to suffuse his shaggy visage. Deeper than cornflower blue, it reminded me purplish-blue in the watercolors of the Zen painter Hirogoche.

I hesitated. Then I quickly ascertained that Burrup was choking on what seemed to be a large piece of gray meat. Immediately I positioned myself behind him and performed the Heimlich maneuver. After I had made a few hard compressions of his upper abdomen,- something popped out of Bull's mouth. It fell with -a distinct plop on the sidewalk, began to wiggle, turned upright and slowly hopped away. At the same time I felt something turn squishy, mushy in my hands, still clasped around Burrup's solar plexus,

I stepped back. Burrup regained his color. But to my horror, I saw blood on my hands. Thinking I had injured him, "I shrieked, "Are you all right?" I had visions of endless litigation, and I yearned for the apathy, the cosmic indifference of animals who placidly ruminated in fields far from the crazy-making asphalt and concrete cacophony. They moo and they do not curse their fate.

Bull nodded gratefully, his eyes still watery and red. There was a peculiar albumenous stain on the front of his trousers and the remains of a dead toad, crushed by my efforts, leaked through his shirt.

"Don't let it get away, " he drawled.

"What?"

"The toad, you idiot. The toad!" He pointed at the beast, now rapidly hopping down the gutter toward a storm drain. Burrup made a hearty lunge for the toad, but it got away, lost in the humid subterranean murk beneath the harsh city. (Who knows what strange mutants lurk there after all these years--half toad, half alligator. Talk about your recombinant DNA)

8ull was disconsolate. I had saved his life. But for what. What price survival. He had lost his toads.

I went back to his pad with him and we snorted morning glory seeds and ginsing. It was then that Bull disclosed he was hooked on Bufotonin-- a rare drug secreted in the mucous of certain species of toads.

Bull described alife of fear and squalor, of dread and ennui, of scissors and paste as he trekked from Tangiers to Toledo, Ohio seeking toad connections.

I assured Bull I'd find him more toads. The man was a genius, had the soul of a poet. Better yet, I told him, I knew of a physician--a certain Dr Sax--who had developed treatments for addicts of all kinds. Bull seemed disinterested until I told him about the parts of therapy that involved ritual use of jimson weed, while sitting in an orgone accumulator, and, at the same time, being carefully strangled. Afterwards, one became part of a follow-up group where progress was rewarded by calibrated flagellation by pretty vicious young boys.

"You're a good lad," Bull said, patting my knee. "And I've noticed you have a really callipygian ass."

Say what you will, Bull was a genius.

I squirmed as he bent me over the sofa. Callipygian ass, I thought. Just the thing to scrawl on the Dean's wall.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bull slip something into his mouth. The bugger had another toad. I felt him shudder. Then he gasped and fell back on the floor. He quivered and jerked a few times. And that was all. His blue eyes ogled the ceiling for all eternity.

Still there might be hope. I phoned emergency medical, described Bull's condition. And they dispatched a unit. As I waited nervously, I looked once more at his face. Two toad legs twitched from the corners of Bull’s mouth. I thought of Galvani. I couldn't help it. I thought of Galvani and electricity of the nervous system. I giggled, barfed, woofed my cookies. Numb, I sat in a corner and watched my formless naked lunch seep into the carpet.

The emergency medical technician took one look at Bull and turned to me. "Toad OD?"

"I think so," I responded. "Bufotonin. He OD'd on bufotonin."

The technician pulled the toad from Bull’s mouth, briefly examined it and dropped it on the floor. The toad lit on its back. Its legs waggled helplessly in the air.

The medical technician shook his head. "Not bufotoxin," he muttered.

"Blowdarts. "

"What?" I said.

"What you have here," said the medical technician, nudging the toad with his shoe, " is Dendrobates Tricolor. This little guy is just brimming over with an alkaloid, Toxin 2511D, I think it is. Natives of Colombia and Ecuador rub it on their darts. Blows out cardiac nerve."

"My God. How could he have made that mistake? He was a genius."

"Well," the medical technician said, "there's a lot of bad shit out on the street these days. And these toadsuckers--"

"What? What about the toadsuckers," I said defensively.

"Aww, you know," he winked, "toadsuckers. They'll suck anything."

BRK-brk-a-bekbrk-coax-co-ax

Aristophanes