It all started for me many years ago, when I was a child. I lived in the dustbowl region of the United States of America. I had just moved to the states from Stokke, Norway. My paternal grandfather was from Iceland, and his wife was Swedish. My mother was Swedish and Norwegian. We came to live in Stokke because it was the place where my mother grew up. It was a wonderful town. However, my father had always wanted to live in the United States. So away we moved. As we arrived in Kansas, huge dust storms were raging around the region. Everything was barren. All I wanted to do was go back home to Scandinavia. Although I could speak English very well, the move was difficult.
I became chums with a chap named Melty White. He was quite a few years older than me, but mentally, he was quite a few years younger. He was sweet and affectionate, yet always ready for a good time. We enjoyed our times together as best we could. All we did for fun was play with dirt. If we were not playing in it, we were eating it. If we were not eating it, we were breathing it. If we were not breathing it, we were reading about it, or bathing in it, or making dust balls, and having dust ball fights in the backyard. We also played farmer…
He was sort of the town orphan. Everybody took turns taking care of him, but my family took care of him the most. Eventually we let him live in the crawlspace under the porch {We would have let him in the house, but he let off the most unbearable smells}…
This is Melty and me in the early days…Unfortunately, it is the only known picture of him
Then, or lives changed forever.
Mr. Perlin Gilbert moved into our town. He had just won the African Lottery. He came under the disguise of a drug store owner. He opened his shop on Main Street and began to wreak his havoc all over town. Melty and I got jobs in his store to save up some money. Mr. Gilbert proved to be an annoying yet helpful and delightful employer and friend. He made us work hard in the shop, but always rewarded our efforts heartily.
We knew from the start that he was a weird one. First of all, he was obsessed with sloths. He often ran off long anecdotes about these things he called “The Great Sloth Wars”. I thought it was utter nonsense and Melt could only think of giant clapping monkeys. He told me, after a year or two in his service, the real reason he was here. He had come as an agent of The Great Sloth Wars. He was supposed to be spying on the jack rabbits of the area. Apparently, most animal life forms were involved in the war {at least subconsciously}. He wanted to see if he could employ the jack rabbits as spies for the Good sloths. Unfortunately, they proved more unintelligent than he had hoped. However, he did find interest in a lizard specie of the area.
He would tell Melty and me fantastical stories of narrow escapes, turncoat ferrets, and baby sloth deliveries. At first I was disgusted by his naivety but after a while, I wrote him off as a senile old man and just went with his stories. He would go on for HOURS. He told me and Melty that we were the only people in with he entrusted these stories.
Now, whether it was the constant dirt being blown up my facial cavities, the blazing heat, or even my young childlike ways, I will never know; but in the end, I started to believe his stories. In fact, I believed them with every fiber of my being. I became a sloth disciple, adhering to Mr. Gilbert like a dirt to a licked lollipop. Melty was always there with me too. You know I think he believed the stories more than I did.
Mr. Gilbert proposed a deal. He wanted us to come with him around the world to fight the wars. We would come on the condition that we would always stay loyal and do anything we could to win. He even told us our lives may be on the line, but we didn’t care. He told us that we knew so much already, that our lives were already in danger. He even said that we could go with him to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to go reindeer riding. Apparently it was big there. He said that all true Good sloths {and affiliates} decide to go on pilgrimage of their own choice. Mr. Gilbert’s pilgrimage was to Ulaanbaatar. He called it the city of champions. One of his dreams was to return there, after the war and settle down for the rest of his life. This sounded just as good to me.
My father and I had been fighting a lot because we were such lame farmers. In fact, we could hardly stand each other. My mother and I were even more estranged. Mostly this was because she just locked herself in the bathroom to hide her sorrow. The blowing dirt had really gotten to her. I got in fight with my dad because he blamed me for sticking my gum under his reclaimed shed wood coffee table. I suggested that maybe he stuck a little of it under there. Then he denied it and made a big deal about it, so I declared, “ Hey bumfuzzle- you don‘t know my life!!”, and ran into the sunset with my white sombrero, that Melty stole from a peddling gypsy in Nantucket.
I ran all the way to Mr. Gilbert’s drug store. I begged and pleaded for him to take me on our adventures right then, but he was hesitant. He said we needed time to gather supplies and food for our journey. Very unhappy I slumped into the corner and fell asleep.
In the morning, Mr. Gilbert had a very pleasant surprise for me. He had loaded his car, and was ready to depart. I, with only the clothes on my back, clambered in the car, and was ready to go when I remembered Melty. Mr. Gilbert told me that he had already talked to Melty and given his fragile condition, he had decided to stay in the town as an official spy.
So, thus my adventures with Perlin Gilbert the billionaire sloth spy began. At first it was a little strange to be traveling alone with an older man, but I knew he had a heart of gold, with the pure intent of ousting the evil sloths of the world. This was reason enough to follow him to the ends of the earth.
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