Hakkai hefted the sated dragon to rest against his chest, with Jeep's head and neck trailing over one shoulder. "We'll just have to pamper him for a while."

"You're treating him like he's some sort of spoiled rotten little poodle," Sanzo snapped.

"Aw, c'mon, Sanzo, he deserves it," said Goku. "He spends a lot of time carrying us around--maybe we should carry him around for a while. Hey, can we go inside? Maybe there's more cool stuff inside."

Inside proved to be a large gymnasium-like room with a stage at one end, with basketball-court lines visible on the floor. Much of the floor was taken up with souvenirs for sale, which, of course, Goku made a beeline for, to a collective sigh from his three companions.

In the first aisle he wandered down, Gojyo spotted something truly fascinating. It was a flat box full of ballpoint pens, with clear middles. There were images of various kinds inside the clear midsection of each pen--an outsize ear of corn suspended over an image of the Corn Palace itself, an antique car with the same image, and so forth. And, as Gojyo discovered, if you tilted the pen to one side or the other, the foreground image would slide back and forth.

"OoooooOOOOOoooooh," Gojyo breathed, just exactly like the aliens in TOY STORY. He was still standing there, tilting the pen back and forth, watching the giant ear of corn float eerily to and fro, when Hakkai approached.

"What have you got, Gojyo?" Hakkai asked. On receiving no answer from the thoroughly mesmerized kappa, Hakkai helped himself to one of the pens--with a picture of a covered wagon pulled by a team of oxen over the prairie--and after a quizzical glance at Gojyo, he tried it too. "Say, this one moves pretty fast. Would you like to race?"

"Huh?" Gojyo snapped momentarily out of it. "Sure. This giant ear of corn will go faster than a couple of cows any day. I'll bet you 1,000 yen!"

A few minutes later, after several scintillating rounds of float-pen racing, Gojyo was fuming, and also broke. "How come you always win?" he demanded, handing Hakkai his last sen-yen note.

Hakkai smiled angelically. "Well, Gojyo, yours might be bigger, but it looks like mine is faster!"

While Goku rampaged up and down the aisles of corn-bedizened t-shirts and postcards, Sanzo found himself staring at a display of various corn-themed kitchen items. He picked up a package of "corn holders"--shaped like half an ear of corn, split vertically in the middle, with two sharp metal spikes protruding from the flat end, and meant to be stabbed into opposite ends of an ear of corn for mess-free eating.

He stared at it, then glanced over at Goku, who was busily testing each and every one of the souvenir back-scratchers. And then Sanzo came as close as he ever does to smiling, and sauntered up to the counter with the corn holders in hand.

"Hey," Gojyo called from across the aisle, "something's happening out there. Let's go check it out."

Indeed, some people had started to wander into the room and converge in front of the stage, where rows of folding metal chairs were set up. They sat by twos and threes, or stood in small groups chatting. Their curiosity aroused, the four made their way to the front row of one section of chairs and had a seat.

Momentarily, a large woman in a pink suit stepped up to a microphone set up immediately in front of the stage and beamed at everyone who sat in the chairs before her. "Good morning, everyone! We're so happy to have you as our guests at this year's Mitchell Elementary School Pageant! This year's theme is 'Children of the Corn and Pals!'"

The curtain rose to reveal a line of squirming first-graders, all wearing alarmingly realistic papier-mache costumes that made them resemble very large vegetables with human legs and feet. The teacher had seated herself behind a piano, and she began to play it; the children started to sing a cheery song about how good and healthy vegetables are for you (although their voices were somewhat muffled, since their heads were covered up entirely by the costumes).

Sanzo, Goku, Gojyo and Hakkai had never seen anything quite like this. They stared at this unique spectacle in stunned blankness, all thought processes momentarily arrested, while the proud parents around them beamed at their offspring and clapped sporadically.

When the song was over, the children filed down off the stage and began to disperse throughout the audience. Once settled in their positions, a spotlight illuminated each child, who spoke a brief (muffled) piece about his or her particular vegetable costume to his little section of the audience.

Goku, Gojyo and Hakkai found themselves confronted by a very large ear of multicolored corn, who began to recite his speech: "I am a ear of Indian corn. I am called...it is called Indian corn because it was...it is...I am grown by the Indians. The Indians were the first Americans, and they are known today as Native Americans. They are called that because they were here the first." The kid's voice trailed off uncertainly.

Hakkai leaned forward. "How can you see where you're going in that costume?" he asked solicitously.

"I can't," said the ear of Indian corn, who then turned to go and promptly fell flat on where his face probably was. He staggered to his feet (no mean feat considering his arms were entrapped in the costume) and blundered off, eventually getting intercepted by the teacher and guided to a waiting chair.

Sanzo, seated on the end of the row, narrowed his eyes and stared suspiciously at the rather large pod of peas that presented itself to him. "I have to pee," said the muffled voice from deep within the costume.

"Don't you mean 'I am a pea?'" Sanzo said. (Gods help me, I'm talking to a little kid who's dressed as a vegetable, Sanzo thought. I need a cigarette.)

"No," said the pod of peas in a quavery voice. "I mean, I have to pee." With some alarm, Sanzo noted the kid's legs start to quake, and then, to his disgust and horror, a darker-green blotch began to surface on the papier-mache pod. Sanzo closed his eyes tightly. Please, please, tell me this isn't happening.... "We're going," he snarled, standing up suddenly and brushing past the hapless vegetable-suit-clad child. The other three were all too glad to have an excuse to leave.

Moments later, they were all back outside, blinking dazedly in the warm morning sunshine. They decided to find someplace to get a decent meal and some rest, so they piled into Jeep, refreshed after a brief nap on Hakkai's shoulder, and off they went.

After they'd turned a few corners and left downtown behind them, Gojyo spoke, breaking their stunned silence. "What the hell was that, anyway?" Nobody had an answer.

This page was created September 21, 2003. Last updated September 21, 2003.