Jack B. Goode and the Neo-Modern Prometheus by Robert Loy

* * * *
Several years ago—July of 1999, to be precise—Robert Loy first pun-ished us with Jack B. Goode’s witty investigation of the world of fairy tales, “Sing a Song of Sixpence.” In his second case, “A Billboard Lovely as a Tree” (Dec. 2000), the gumshoe took on advertising. Now he addresses a Universal topic. Be warned: Monstrous puns lie ahead.

* * * *

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” 

—Nietzsche 

* * * *

The hunchback with halitosis that could raise the dead and make them start fanning the air with their shrouds tightened the straps that held me to the cold metal table and laid out an array of rusty scalpels and cruddy clamps for his boss.

“Tell me again how this whole thing works,” I asked the psycho medico who was going to perform an unwanted operation on the Goode gray matter.

“I’ve already explained this to you, Mister Goode,” the doctor said. “My creature’s brains seem to have rotted and he can no longer perform his assignments here at my laboratory, simple though they are. You know, at one time, I thought these creations of mine would be sweeping the country. Turns out sweeping the laboratory is about as challenging an intellectual task as he can handle. Therefore we are going to transfer your brain into his body. Here, hold this for a second.”

He handed me some miniature lightning-rod-looking gizmo and clamped a cold metal helmet onto my head

“Uh-huh, and what do I get out of this deal?”

He thought for a second.

“Well, I suppose we could transfer the monster’s brain into your skull, but can I be frank?—Of course I can, who else could I be?”—and he burst into the kind of laughter I think I’ve heard referred to as maniacal, and I thought not for the first time that there was something not quite right about this mad scientist—”but seriously, Mister Goode, as I said, the monster’s brain is no longer functional. It’s nothing more than a mass of soggy used tissues. It’s absolutely useless.”

“So I’ll run for Congress. Or go into advertising. I’d still rather have it than nothing.”

“All right, we’re ready to begin,” the doctor said. “Fritz, go ahead and throw the—”

“Wait! Wait!” I yelled. “You don’t want my brain anyway. My brother is much smarter. Let me go and get him—oh, and I just remembered my insurance doesn’t cover brain transplants. So—”

Just then the doctor cackled like a crazed eagle again, putting the brakes on my protestations. He shooed the hunchback away and put his hand on the switch that would turn the tall green monster into a brilliant detective and yours truly into a vegetable. (Hopefully a French fry, as that is the only vassal of the vegetable kingdom that Jack B. Goode has ever been able to stomach.)

Somebody started screaming and it took me a second to realize it was me. I didn’t recognize my scream voice; I haven’t used it since the judge said I had to pay my ex’s attorney fees after my last divorce.

Like so many unpleasantnesses Jack B. Goode has found himself in, this whole thing started with a woman in a bar.

* * * *

“What’ll ya have?” asked the barman. He was a baldheaded bruiser with a cauliflower ear and a nose that resembled a long winding cobblestone road. His name was Carlos and he was the proprietor of this pub known—with good reason—as Carl’s Bad Tavern.

“Cirrhosis eventually,” I answered, “but tonight a double scotch. Two of them.”

I lit up a Lucky and wondered if maybe since I was in between cases I should look into the mystery of the detective’s disappearing way with the dames. I hadn’t had a date since dear old Mom messed up and bought me a palm tree for my birthday. Bless her heart, she thought it was poison oak.

But that mystery might be beyond even Jack B. Goode’s deductive reasoning skills. Maybe it was just as well. Maybe I should look on this long lull as an opportunity, you know, use the time to take up yoga or catch up on my poetry reading.

Just then as if in answer to my prayer, came a walking, talking sonnet.

Accent on the word “walking.” This broad had legs that were almost as long as my second ex-wife’s mean streak.

She sat down, crossed those endless stems, and pulled out a compact. She checked her reflection but didn’t do anything to her face other than check out both of her cheeks and smile at her reflection. I didn’t blame her. You couldn’t have improved anything.

If I had to describe her in one G-rated word, I would describe her as statuesque and hope that I was correct in assuming that was the French word for “stacked.” She had black and white hair piled up to Marge Simpson levels on her head and some weird piercings that looked like screws in her neck but that was okay—I can overlook a lot if you’re statuesque. I was in love or lust or something in that old familiar zip code, and I figured she musta been feeling pretty close to the same way cuz she sat in the stool next to mine and there were other seats available—not stools, as the place was getting busy, but some overturned barrels over by the back door with a nice view of the overflowing dumpsters outside. The seats were by no means plush, but a lot of the skirts who had scoped out the joint before her seemed to prefer them to the stools abutting mine.

When you’ve been without feminine affection as long as I have they all start to look good, but this one woulda caught my eye if I’d been staggering home from a three-day orgy.

“Excuse me, Miss,” I said as suavely as I could around that lump in my throat. “Can I buy you a beverage?”

She just shook her head, didn’t even look at me. But if she thought that was going to discourage me, she didn’t know that the B in Jack B. Goode stood for been-a-long-time.

“No, really,” I elaborated, “anything you want. Even if it’s got umbrellas or little palm trees or something else cutesy sticking up out of it. I’m secure enough in my masculinity to order a sloe gin whiz.”

“No thank you, really. I’m not much of a drinker.”

I gazed around the bar at the broken windows, the pervo with one hand on the payphone and the other down his pants, at the passed-out patrons and the pickpockets relieving them of much of their worldly goods.

“Well then, why are you here, may I ask? You just come in for the ambiance?”

“No, it’s not that. I appreciate your offer, but I don’t have time for fun and games. I’m in trouble. I need help.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” I said. “Here, let me give you one of my cards.”

“A card?” she exclaimed. “Didn’t you just hear me say I don’t have time for games?”

I stashed the card back in my jacket pocket.

“All right. What’s the story, sister? You come into a bar but you don’t want to drink, and you’re not in the mood for a quick game of Crazy Eights with my business cards. What do you want?”

She patted her zebra-like locks and said, “I am looking for a detective.”

I pulled the card back out of my pocket, read it just to make sure, then said, “I’m a detective. What can I do for you?”

“You’re a detective? For real?”

“Want to see the gum on the bottom of my shoe?”

“No thanks. I don’t like gum any better than I like whiskey.”

“It’s a joke,” I told her.

She thought for a minute then bust out laughing.

“Oh, I get it! Ha ha, you’ve got me in stitches.”

I was going to point out that someone had already beaten me to it—this babe was covered in scars—but thought better of it. She might be sensitive about them, but I have a thing for scars. I don’t know if you could call the thing a full-fledged fetish or not, but I’ve never been able to resist a chick with a cicatrix or two.

She went on to explain that she was worried about her husband who had been missing for several days.

“Do you think there’s a chance he might be dead?” I asked.

“Oh, I know he’s dead,” she said. “He was dead when I married him.”

I shook my head in commiseration.

“Been there, darling. Only I didn’t find that out about my first wife until we were on our honeymoon.”

* * * *

My bankbook was as empty as my datebook, so I took the case even though I don’t usually do domestic stuff and I personally woulda preferred it if hubby was dead leaving the missus a note telling her to seek comfort in the arms of a brilliant detective, or failing that, in the arms of someone tall, dark, and hungover.

Don’t get me wrong. Messing with married women is against my code. Lucky for me I’m a flop as a cryptologist.

The way she described him was kinda nonspecific—I don’t know how many eight feet tall, green skinned, megascarred, flat-headed guys there are in the city, but I bet it’s a lot. However, there weren’t too many scary castles on top of a hill, which was where she said he worked and where he was last seen, and so since I was getting paid by the job and not by the hour I proceeded thither posthaste.

There was a mob of people milling around the castle brandishing torches and pitchforks and actively planning mayhem when I got out of my car. Holdovers from the Lollapalooza tour last week would be my guess. I elbowed my way through the crowd and up to the door of the castle.

It took a long time before someone answered the doorbell. I had plenty of time to watch the bats play a hearty game of let’s-see-who-can-drop-the-biggest-load-of-guano-on-Jack-B.-Goode’s-Yugo Cabriolet. When somebody finally did respond I could see why it took so long.

The dude who answered the door was a wall-eyed hunchback with a bum leg that dragged uselessly behind him. All of a sudden I felt kinda bad about figuring that my ingrown toenail was justification enough for parking in the handicapped spot closest to the castle outside.

He didn’t let his physical challenges get him down, I’ll give him credit for that. He gave me a big—albeit lopsided—smile and invited me in.

“The doctor is expecting you,” he said, once the front door had stopped creaking.

Well, that seemed unlikely, but I followed the hunchback down a dark, dank corridor. The place was full of cobwebs and spiderwebs and there were even birds of prey flying around in the upper reaches of the cathedral ceiling. My client had told me that her missing husband was the janitor here at the castle; if he performed his husbandly duties in the bedroom as lackadaisically as he did his custodial duties here at his workplace, I felt sure I could steal the scarred-up, skunk-haired girl of my dreams away from him without breaking a sweat.

“I’m looking for a guy that supposedly works here,” I said to my hunchbacked host. “According to his wife he doesn’t have a name, but she said you’d know who I was talking about if I told you that he has the heart of a saint and the pancreas of a plumber. This ringing any bells for you?”

He stopped walking and turned to look at me over his hump.

“I don’t have to ring the bells anymore,” he said. “That was my previous job at the college there in Indiana. Now I’m an uppertaker.”

It took me a minute to figure out what that meant.

“You mean undertaker?” I said. It was either that or he was the world’s slowest amphetamine addict.

“No, I take the bodies up and bring them here to the doctor. But lately I can’t get to the cemetery because of the weather and because they’ve added nighttime security. So we can’t get new brains for our monster. That’s where you come in.”

“I’m not sure I dig,” I told my newfound friend.

“Oh, that’s okay,” he reassured me. “You don’t have to. I’ll do all the grunt work. You’re going to be the brains of this operation.”

Well, the brains, that sounded about right. Somebody finally realized my mental potential. I was feeling pretty full of myself as we wandered into the laboratory.

A wild-eyed guy in a white lab coat was puttering about with some Bunsen burners or whatever the hell it is these scientific types like to putter with.

“Master,” my escort said to the saucer-eyed sawbones, “Mister Goode is here.”

The doc turned. He had wide unblinking eyes and frizzy fair hair that flew in all directions.

“Are you sure it’s him, Fritz?” he inquired. “How do you know it’s Mister Goode?”

“I had a hunch,” he said.

Well, I could have pointed out that he still had it. Instead I picked up an old magazine and sat down to peruse. That’s what I thought one was supposed to do in a doctor’s office.

But the fruity physician snatched the antique periodical out of my hands and screamed in my face, “It’s a Life! It’s a Life!”

Well, actually it was a U.S. Weekly, but I didn’t correct my host. Mainly because I was distracted. On the other side of the room I espied a not-too-smart-looking green guy with bolts in his neck. I walked over and stood there a minute or two, checking him out. Eight feet tall? Check. Sewed together like a patchwork quilt thrown together by a drunken monkey? Check. Head you could have used for a miniature ironing board? Check.

This was the guy I was looking for, all right, and I woulda grabbed him and took off, but he was strapped down on a metal table. And he probably tipped the scales at two thirds of a ton.

And besides, there was a poker game going on.

That’s right, a poker game. My chance to test out that old axiom about unlucky in love, lucky at cards. If that theory was true I’d soon own a pot of money, the deed to a big scary castle, and more bats than there are in all of Louisville.

There were five chairs set up around the card table in the corner, but only three players. The dealer was a pale, older Eastern European gent in a dark three-piece suit that might have been fashionable back in the days of Shakespeare and Charlemagne, but maybe not. I know as much about the Renaissance rag trade as I do about what women want other than for me to leave them alone. To his left sat a nondescript fellow with sideburns that—although it might have been a trick of the dim lighting in there—it seemed you could actually watch grow.

The third participant was a fish. And by that I don’t mean he was a sucker or a sap. I mean he had scales and he was wet, green, and slimy. I didn’t pay him as much attention as one might imagine he merited, both because I’d met him before (the last time I’d spent a weekend enjoying all the thrilling sights in DT World), and because of what was going on in the chair next to his.

A hand of five cards floated in the air, and as I watched in amazement, a couple of dollar bills slid their way across the table and into the pot. I also noticed a top hat floating in the air, but the sombrero was as scalpless as the chair was assless.

“I raise,” said a disembodied voice from behind the floating cards, and I wasn’t sure at first if it referred to the stakes of the game or to the hackles on the back of the Goode neck.

“All right, I see you,” said the fish man, which had to be one of the bigger whoppers I’ve heard in a lifetime of lie-collecting. With one of his flippers, he slid a five-spot into the pot. “And I raise you a fin.”

I could see that the piscean player had a full boat—Kings over eights—and I was curious to see if the invisible guy was going to fall for this trap. I thought I might join in the game, seeing as how they had an extra seat, assuming there was room for a guy whose wallet was as sparsely populated as the Northern suburbs of Greenland.

“Hey Gil, mind if I sit in?” I inquired of the fish guy, omitting the part about my bulimic billfold.

“How did you know my name?” he asked.

“Just a hunch,” I told him.

“Hey, are you guys talking about me?” Fritz asked from across the room.

“So, what are the stakes?” I asked.

At least that’s what I think I asked, it’s what I meant to ask. But by the way the old Hungarian-looking dude went off on me, damning my soul and putting a pox on the seventh son of my seventh son (which considering the way the Goode family tree seemed unlikely to branch out any further than to grab the new issues of Big Bazongas from the man at the newsstand did not seem something I needed to add to my list of things to worry about). I mean, you’d’ve thought I’d said something uncomplimentary about his dentures—and I could have, they were uneven and broken and stained from too much marinara sauce, but I was too polite.

“Okay, okay,” I said, “forget it, don’t blow an artery. Probably too rich for my blood anyway.”

The old dude widened his eyes and gave me another look at his stained choppers. “Perhaps that is something we shall soon discover.”

Now, I was confused. Could I play with them or not?

As it turned out, the point was academic, I think the word is, if academic means doesn’t make a bit of damn difference. And it didn’t make any damn difference: just then a couple of goons grabbed me from behind and threw me down on another cold metal table just like the one the monster occupied.

Next thing I knew they had me strapped down and that was when I drew the attention of my host.

“Mister Goode,” the quackpot said. “I certainly want to thank you for volunteering to help us out here.”

“First of all, Doc” I said, “volunteers don’t usually arrive carried kicking and cursing by a couple of palookas. And second, how did you know my name?”

“Oh, Mrs. Monster called and told us you were coming. Said you fell for her scam like a ton of dominos.”

Great, betrayed by a broad again. Maybe I need a better barometer of trustworthiness than cup size and cuteness of scars.

“What’s going on here?” was my next question.

“Oh, we’re going to transfer your brain into the creature’s body.”

“What? Why do you want to do that?”

“Could we hurry this up just a bit, Victor?” came a voice from out of the gloom. I craned my neck around till I espied the pale old pensioner all in black sitting at the poker table. “I was just about to put the bite on these chumps when your monster’s brain crashed.”

“Yeah,” Gil chimed in, “I hate to carp but we’d like to get his game going again, especially since I was winning. So do what you have to do to this idiot and let’s get on with it.” And I could swear that this card shark was looking at me with bated breath when he waved in my direction.

“So that’s what you need my brain for? So your big ugly janitor can play poker with a bunch of no-count bums?”

The anemic old-timer gave me an evil smile, unveiling those teeth that could easily outdo a Ginsu knife in a can-cutting contest.

“I assure you, young man,” he said in that annoying accent of his, “I am not no-count.”

Just then Fritz bent over to grab some brain-extracting tool from a bottom drawer, exposing about fifty percent of his posterior when he did so. The Transylvanian’s sideburned compadre at the card table must have been allergic to the old blue-collar moon, cuz as soon as he saw Fritz’s fundament he developed a five o-clock shadow that you’d need a couple of machetes to shave. Jojo the dog-faced boy had a pretty impressive stack of cash in front and he was going to need it—he obviously went through shaving cream faster than my second ex-wife went through messenger boys.

But the situation I was in was of course even hairier than that. I tried to fast-talk my way out of it, it didn’t work, the mad scientist threw the switch and this is where you came in and Jack B. Goode checked out.

* * * *

If you’ve never had your brain swapped out with a monster’s, then don’t. There’s nothing pleasant about it. When the strobe lights in my head finally quit flashing, the room was spinning, my stomach was threatening imminent violent revolution, and my head had somehow become wedged inside the barrel of a BB gun.

In other words, except for the lack of a cocktail napkin with digits scrawled on it that bar belles purported to be their phone numbers but would inevitably turn out to be the Losers at Love Hotline, it was exactly like every other Sunday morning I can remember.

And I was stiff, which was perhaps not surprising. My back hurt, my joints ached, my underarms were more chafed than a hooker’s thighs on the day after the buy-one-get-one-free deal.

I opened my mouth to ask the fellows waiting for the poker game to get going again if any of them had a Tylenol or the number to a good masseuse, but all that came out of my mouth was a series of squeaky growls and grunts. I could no more make articulate sounds than I could make time with Catherine Zeta-Jones.

And the itching. Oh my god, the itching was unbearable. And I couldn’t even bend my arms, so I couldn’t scratch anything. It was torture. I squirmed around hoping to somehow relieve the painful prickling, but my balance was almost as reliable as the brakes on my Cabriolet and I snapped the chains that held me and fell off the operating table.

I looked down at my hands. They were green and scarred—not to mention a whole lot farther away from my face than I remembered. This was definitely a head-scratching situation, but as soon as I reached up to do just that, I discovered that the Goode gourd was as flat as the Dodgers’ chances this year. On its descent, my hand brushed against my neck and felt some Home Depot supplies, holding this planate pate on my shoulders.

Even weirder than that was the sensation I got when I looked across the laboratory and saw the guy I’ve only seen in a mirror spryly spring up off his metal table.

What the hell? I thought I was supposed to be handsome as ever but with a coconut full of Kleenex. So how come I’m green and huge but still in possession of my original I.Q.?

The good doctor and Fritz were involved in an altercation. My head was pounding like the landlord was tired of waiting for the rent money, so it was hard to follow but the gist of it was that the doc was irked because Fritz had flipped the wrong combination of switches and exchanged not only me and the monster’s brains but our essences—our souls if you’re inclined to the spiritual.

Oh, so that’s what happened. And this is how it feels to be inside a monster’s body. It had been so long since that magic moonlit night with Esmerelda that I had forgotten what it felt like. No harm done though, right? We’ll just put our space helmets back on, lie back down on the table and start over, right?

Wrong. The monster—difficult to call him that with a straight face now that he was so handsome, but however you want to refer to the guy who was now ambling around in my epidermis—had sized up the situation, pretty quickly for someone of his meager mentality, realized he had gotten the clean end of the stick in this deal and headed for the front door, pausing only long enough to give his former employer a bop on the beezer. Force of habit made him attempt to crash through the door frame, but that didn’t work in his new body; and I winced to think that if I ever got my old frame back it was going to ache for months after this fool got done smashing into things with it.

Of course I tried to stop him, but by the time I’d figured out how to operate this new loosely-held-together body and worked out the kinks enough to stand up, he’d already made his escape. And he wasn’t the only one. The moon was full and in its place in the night sky. Jojo let out a howl and then he broke through the window and loped out of sight. I didn’t know where he was going, but judging by all that hair on his back it was probably to buy some sandals and black socks then head out to every single beach I’ve ever been to. Or maybe he was planning to hop in the Yugo with Jack Version 2.0 and chercez a little femmes. I kinda had him pegged as the wolfish type.

Oh well, Jack B. Goode has always been a look-at-the-bright-side kinda guy, and so I searched around for the silver lining I knew had to be lurking around here somewhere.

Well, the kinks were already starting to work out, I think if I can remember how to get to the gym all the stiffness will work itself out before too long. As for the green skin, well, they’ve got a tanning booth there at the gym, I should be able to take care of this problem. And the flat head could come in handy for holding my drinks. I’ve needed a new coffee table ever since I broke my old one that night I mistook it for a burglar and tackled it.

And hey, wait a minute, I am now over eight feet tall and, a quick five-finger foray down into my Duck Heads proved that I was built proportionately. There’s a hot-looking babe covered in delicious scar tissue who is so hot for this bod she hired a private dick to bring it home.

No, that’s not right. She set me up, right? But she does dig the brute, right? My headache was subsiding but it was still hard to think, and I was so caught up in my mental aerobics I barely heard the old Transylvanian finally ask me to join the game.

“Poker?” he asked.

“Don’t be vulgar,” I told him. “but just between you and me, I got a feeling the sky’s the limit if I play my cards right.”

“Why don’t you play your cards right over here?”

Hmm, that might be a good idea. Especially since I might need a grubstake to woo that marvelous monstress, and my new mug sported what could charitably be termed a poker face. I mulled over this option while my ears beheld a familiar sound from outside, the stubborn “no-no-no-no-no” sound of my old Yugo refusing to awaken from its slumbers.

“It’s a lime! It’s a lime!” that crazy-ass doctor screamed. I was going to point out that what it actually was a lemon, but I was keeping a low profile hoping the sawbones wouldn’t try to hand me a broom or a mop or something.

I sat down between the clandestine contestant who was holding his cards pretty close to his chest—or his neck or his armpit, who knows—and the foppish fossil. Old Gil made me shell out a couple clams for ante, and then he dealt me my cards, four tens and some other card I was too discombobulated to discern. I tried to say I’ll bet my house but my new vocal cords were still pretty rusty and it came out as more of a guttural growl.

There was nothing wrong with my new ears, though. I could hear clear as a bell, Jackmonster digging through the Yugo’s glove compartment.

Good luck to you, my friend. You can have it all. I’ve decided I like your life a hell of a lot better than mine, and after I clean these three clowns out of their savings I’m going to go make a little magic with Mrs. Monster—my Mrs. Monster. You can have everything in that car, that stack of overdue bills, a black book with no numbers in it, an empty checkbook, an empty wallet. Me, I got a poker game to win.

The Transylvanian called me and I was just about to lay my cards down and collect my winnings when the air was rent with a horrific scream.

“What in the world was that?” asked the ghoulish golden-ager.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “The monster evidently found that picture of my third ex-wife I keep in the glove compartment to scare off car thieves. Now c’mon, let’s see what you’ve got.”

They turned over their cards and displayed their dclass playing cards. I raked in the pot. Believe it or not, this evening, which had started out as such a nightmare, was actually turning out to be my lucky night.

“No more for me,” said the invisible dude. “I’ve already lost my shirt and I can’t see any reason to stick around and lose my pants as well.”

I was going to point out that it really didn’t matter much since for all we knew he was playing buck-naked already when she came va-va-vooming into the castle.

The delightfully disfigured dame of my dreams. My pock-marked sweetie pie.

My heart was pounding in my stomach—that’s right, my stomach. (Evidently the good doctor didn’t exactly ace anatomy class in med school.)

“Come on, Honey,” she said to me, striding up to the table and grabbing my arm. “It’s time to go home. You’ve got a new brain now and I bet you can think of lots of ways to make me scream tonight—and I don’t mean in fright.”

I don’t mind telling you I had to wipe away my first-ever tear of joy before I stood up to start my new life. I’d never been happier in my life. And why not? Life could not possibly be any sweeter. I had a pocketful of money, a beautiful woman who wants me for that best of all possible reasons—my body. I was lucky in cards, lucky in love, and about to get really lucky for the first time in a long time.

I stood up and gave her my arm. She smiled and we headed toward the door that would lead us to the land of happily-ever-after, but we were met there by the monster in my skin. He had found the only thing of value in my car and was pointing it at me with his finger on the trigger.

He didn’t say a word—probably still traumatized by that photograph of Phyllis—but by the way he jabbed me with the barrel of the Beretta it was pretty obvious what he wanted me to do.

“Come on, guy,” I found my voice and I used it to plead with. “Anything but that.”

But he kept on pushing me back toward that damned table.

My lucky night was about to come to an end.

* * * *

When I woke up, I still had the metal hat on, and I knew right away I was back in my old body.

The castle was empty except for the doctor and me. He was pacing frantically around his ruined laboratory, probably trying to figure out whose HMO he could bill for this fiasco.

I found my fedora, placed it on my once-again more-or-less-round head and started walking toward the door.

What a night. Full of sound and fury, but once again Jack B. Goode got neither paid nor laid.

“Hey, where are you going?” the doctor inquired.

It was way after midnight, and I wasn’t ready to face the horror of another night on my own, so there was only one place I could think to go.

“Back to Carl’s Bad Tavern, I guess. Want to come?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What’s the place like?”

I thought about how best to describe my favorite haunt. The sawdust on the floor, the blood on the walls, the jukebox that hasn’t worked right since a dissatisfied client hurled yours truly through the Hank Williams section.

Finally I decided to put it in terms I was sure he could understand.

I threw my hands up in the air and shrieked, “It’s a dive! It’s a dive!”