It's Still Life

A Penny for the Guy

“…and will you stop calling me Shoelace. My tail does not look like a shoelace.” Marcel sits beneath the table with a chocolate cereal box over his head.

“What are you doing, Marcel?”

“Taking precautions.”

“Against what?”

“The British.”

“That’s rather broad.”

BOOM.

“See?”

“It’s Guy Fawkes Night, Shoelace.”

“Yes. I have been investigating this.”

“Oh.”

“In 1605, a group of men planned to blow up Parliament. The plot failed. Guy Fawkes was arrested and later executed.”

“Correct.”

“And now, four hundred years later, you commemorate the failure of an explosion by making explosions?”

“Well—”

“And you celebrate the survival of Parliament by setting enormous fires?”

“It’s tradition.”

“Ah. Tradition. The word people use when they have run out of explanations.”

Another explosion shakes the window.

Marcel pulls the cereal box lower.

“And the effigies?”

“People used to make a Guy and burn it on the bonfire.”

“You burn a pretend man?”

“Sometimes.”

“While eating?”

“Hotdogs. Hamburgers. Mulled wine.”

He emerges from beneath the box.

“Let me understand. You assemble in the cold, set fire to a human-shaped object, eat a sausage, drink warm alcohol, and watch the sky explode.”

“That’s about it.”

“And this is considered family entertainment?”

“Apparently.”

Marcel takes out his tiny red pencil.

“I have a question.”

“Only one?”

“Why not commemorate the survival of Parliament by allowing everyone to survive the evening?”

I consider this.

“Not much of a spectacle, Shoelace.”

“Then have a sausage.”

“We already do.”

“WITHOUT THE ARTILLERY.”

BOOM.

He retreats beneath his cereal box.

After a while, a small voice emerges.

“Also, I have found a historical inaccuracy.”

“What’s that?”

“Guy Fawkes was not the only conspirator. Yet he gets the bonfire, the fireworks, and the annual publicity.”

“True.”

“His publicist was very good.”

“Marcel—”

“And another thing.”

“Yes?”

“If the purpose is to remember what happened in 1605, why does nobody appear to be remembering it?”

Outside, something shrieks, whistles, and detonates.

Marcel sighs.

“Four hundred years, and still no one has learned to use an indoor voice.”

He lifts the cereal box just enough to push out a paw.

“Pass the Comté, please.”

“Feeling safer?”

“No. But if civilisation is going to make a complete ding-dong of itself, I refuse to face it hungry.”

“There is one twist in the tale. Fawkes jumped from the gallows ladder and broke his own neck, avoiding the prolonged horrors of the rest of the sentence.”

Marcel puts down his cheese, “Wait. They were going to hang him, cut him open, and then cut him into pieces?”

“Yes, Shoelace.”

“And now they celebrate with sausages?”

I nod, “Apparently.”

He stares at me, “I withdraw my complaint about the fireworks. I wish to complain about the entire century.”

“Which century?”

“ALL OF THEM!”