One day a greasy little man named Silas walked through a Sequoia forest, wearing a faded t-shirt and his least-favorite cargo shorts because the good ones were in the wash. He hobbled along a dirt path, his limp caused not by some tragic birth defect, a bout of fibromyalgia or those ill-fitting cargos but by a tiny toad that had hopped into one of the moccasins beside his bed while he slept the night before. Having fallen asleep, it awoke in the morning finding itself under attack by five stinky piggies.

This man, this character of ours about which both of you now read, was neither miscreant nor delinquent, neither malfeasant nor malefactor nor culprit nor any of the other synonyms for “thug” you might care to look up. He was just a man alone in the woods.

Or so he believed.

Left with the only two character options present in the writer’s cerebellum at this moment – hero or sycophant – Silas was a sycophant. And he paused.

He paused to inhale the perfume of the fresh, verdant forest, some of it just plywood scenery painted Vermont green but as much of it real foliage as the prop budget would permit without getting another chastising call from the tightfisted producers back in Hollywood, those Peter-principled accountants sitting in their big leather wingback chairs inside the bungalow marked “Finance Dept.” on the studio lot, sipping Chai and contributing nothing but angst to the creative process.

A deep breath filled Silas’ remaining lung, the other lung having been spontaneously donated to the YMCA years earlier, where it arrived uninvited in a plain, unrefrigerated cardboard box that was immediately thrown in the dumpster out back with some empty chlorine bottles and a pair of skidmarked swim trunks a kid in the “Advanced Sardine” class had abandoned in his pungent locker.

Silas bent down to examine his left moccasin and sort out why it might have chosen to become a nuisance on this otherwise faultless morning. As he did so, he heard a soughing in the meadow just ahead, where the forest parted and the sun dappled the forest floor like some would-be Renoir on the first day of Introduction to Oil Painting class when the teacher said, “Now daub, everybody daub, daub!”

Soughing, to save us both some time, is a rushing or rustling sound. This particular soughing was of the extra-extra-large variety, or XXL as we say around the haberdashery, as it was caused by an elephant browsing about the clearing, just now pulling a ripe apple off a craggy old tree.

Silas approached cautiously, like you do with elephants if you know what’s good for you.

“Who are you and what might you be doing here?” inquired the elephant, eyeing Silas warily, but not really too warily because he could actually smite the fellow in an instant if he so chose, just FYI.

“I mean you no harm,” said Silas, sensing that, as it had all his life, his slippery countenance was once again belying the fact that he really did mean no harm.

“Appreciated,” said the elephant, “but not an answer to the question.” As it chewed, the beast shifted its weight back and forth between left and right legs like a retail security guard with varicose veins might on the seventh hour of his shift only with a different number of legs. Occasionally its trunk batted at a swarm of black flies hovering above its head, something you hardly ever see a security guard do.

“I am Silas,” Silas replied, “and, by profession, I am a sycophant.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said the elephant. “And that is…?”

“Many make their way in life by overdoing something. Competitive eaters. Reality show producers. Evangelists. I make mine by overpraising others. It is a way of endearing myself to those in power. Some call it fawning. I call it a living.”

“You are a toady, then?”

“I have been called that,” Silas sighed, “but not so flat a toady as the one I just found in my shoe.” He shook out the squashed amphibian and replaced the moc. “I may have a two-digit I.Q., but I have a six-figure income.”

“I find most wallpaper patterns quite busy. Yet I could never compliment someone’s choice of wallpaper,” said the elephant. “I would have to come clean.”

“That is a luxury I do not enjoy. Good thinking on your part though. Smart to be sociable.”

“Was that –?”

“…Yes, I’m afraid it was. I am so sorry.”

“Nah, hit me again,” the creature said.

“Your eyelashes – are they real? Because such magnificent strands as those, I have never seen outside of a Las Vegas showroom. Surely they cannot be original equipment.”

The elephant laughed, giving out a soft, vague trumpet like a retired jazzman attempting a comeback despite emphysema. It did indeed possess fine eyelashes, half a yard in length and black as night. When it blinked, their flutter caused the leaves of nearby maples to dance in the breeze. Though as a male it was unconcerned with such affectations.

“I imagine you also have lightning-fast computation skills,” Silas added.

“Okay. You got me. Stop,” the elephant responded. “You’re promoted. I could use some company. Climb up on my back and we’ll explore the forest together. Let’s get out of this hot sun.”

Silas clambored up the old apple tree, the elephant moved in close, and the little man was aboard. Together, sycophant and elephant left the clearing on a new forest path, which took them into deep woods beneath a towering canopy of Sequoias.

“This is splendid! And you – you are magnificent, and hardly even smell!” Silas exclaimed with a wide smile.

“I am thirsty,” the elephant replied, skeptically weighing the compliment given the profession of the man who had delivered it. He lumbered on with his new passenger, past crumbling stone boundary markers of long-extinct farmsteads, acres of low ferns and charred campfire sites.

“I can see a river ahead,” Silas said after a time, “if you would care to stop for a drink. I imagine such a majestic trunk could drink it dry.”

Before long they arrived above the the river’s edge, resting atop a steep bank that dropped precipitously to the water. The river was wide, as wide as any mother-in-law, and swifter. Raising its voice to be heard above the rushing current, the elephant suggested to Silas that they look for a safer spot further down the path, where the entry might be less treacherous.

“No river on earth could imperil such a great creature as you, I am sure,” Silas said, “no ocean, no tidal wave, no tsunami, no –”

“Alright! But it was your idea” the elephant interrupted. Gingerly, it stepped off the edge of the bank with one front foot, then the other, and down the slope it went, gaining speed until it could not stop and hit the water with such force that it created a splash even greater than that of the first iPhone.

The elephant looked back to find that the little man had been thrown off him into the current, which now carried him downstream, out of reach, his arms flailing. Silas was swept around the bend in the river, faded out of sight and was ever seen nor heard from again, not even on Nick at Nite.

The elephant, being of formidable strength and great mass, was able to cross the river and walk up the bank on the other side, where he found a bounty of sweet grasses and flowers to munch, and lives quietly to this day.

The Top 10 morals of this story are these:

10. Sycophants who praise should leave elephants to graze

9. Compliment the big guy long enough and eventually you may go along for the ride

8. Ignore the elephant in the room, it will lead to no good

7. Change your car’s oil every 5,000 miles as described in the owner’s manual

6. Never fall asleep inside a moccasin

5. Should you ever find yourself in a fable, listen to the elephant

4. Visit Nantucket after Labor day when the crowds are gone and the rates are lower

3. Don’t sweat gay marriage when global warming is cooking the planet

2. Sycophant and elephant end may both in phant, but that’s no reason to unite them in a story

1. Tis better to be thirsty and alive than drowning in compliments 


© 2009 Jeff Sawyer