Patrick, the Nike logician who’s paid to stay away from headquarters, stared at his notebook and snarled, "If only I could solve this puzzle. When the soar pad activates at a one third of its capacity, the soldier leaps six yards into the air, but, due to the soar pad’s complexities, the soldiers’ hang time is unacceptable. On the other hand, if the soar pad activates at, or near, full capacity, the solider leaps so high and descends so quickly that the solider suffers injury on landing. In either case, it would result in product recall, perhaps even congressional inquiry." The Nike logician hummed along with the electrical hum that pervaded the public library. Others rolled their eyes, sighed, or groaned. Patrick hummed louder, not just for inspiration but to also battle a chant that arose inside his head, Uhhm-ap, Uhm-ip, Uhmh-ap. The effort created a crunch-crack-crinth sensation in his neck, as though his neck were a foil wrapper gnarled by a raptor.

Patrick stared at the symbols on his paper, but his vision blurred. He snarled, "Moreover, if I were to solve for sufficient ankle support and thus allow the soldier to leap safely as high and far as desirable it would necessarily follow that the soldier’s shoes would, when landing on water, sink as though made of lead, even if in a mere mud puddle. Oh, it’s a complex engineering problem." The Nike logician augmented the electric hum, "Uhhm-Taa-ahuhmm-Dahuhumm!" He exalted and ignored the reproachful coughs and sighs from library patrons. His vainglorious moment ended and the Nike logician succumbed to an anxious state of perplexity.

He lifted his gaze from his notebook, its symbols and chicken scratch, past his table, and into nothing at all. He lamented, "If only I weren’t an independent contractor whose degradation is such that I leave my prototypes in bus station restrooms or porno booths with the hope that a possibly fictional R&D operative...If only our soldiers were Nike clad soldiers whose special shoes—of my design, of course—allowed them to leap into the heavens, to travel over land or sea...Christ, if only my dreams weren’t weird…for example, if only if I solve for, liquidate, that snide laughter and that nasty chanting that wakes me up at all hours of the evening and that even haunts me by day, that terrible voice that’s foreign, ancient, and contemptuous."

Patrick stood up, thumped his chest, and yelled, "It’s a matter of bunions and corns verses the fragility of the soldier’s Achilles heel. Solve that and victory is mine!" The sleeping woke, the reading gnashed their teeth, the writing cringed. Those near the Nike logician glared, their wraths and indignations resurgent. All of the public library patrons agreed that he had no business shouting and raising his voice, that the reading room’s silence was protected against all but the constant electrical hum, with which they had reconciled themselves.

His outburst faded and he could again hear the library’s electrical hum. He relaxed and sat down. Then the toes of Patrick’s left foot crumpled inward, crunching and cracking. He cursed, "Fiddlesticks!" Then his right foot heated, blistered and baked. He screamed, "Sakes Alive! Sweet Jesus!" His screams became bestial wails as he bent to rip his prototypes from his feet. His screams diminished as he thought, Oh boy! Quality Assurance would’ve had my head, reminded me that these shoes are meant for our soldiers...would’ve cut me into little pieces like in one of those children’s stories, those fairy tales, those stupid stories, that cautionary garbage on the evening news."

A librarian appeared, arms crossed, brows knitted. Patrick’s outburst crossed the line for he had interrupted the dreams, stories, musings, or ravings inside each patron’s skull. The Nike logician leaped to his feet and ran away, leaving behind his notebooks and his prototype shoes. The pain of one foot swollen and the other blistered made his flight ridiculous, high leaps and exaggerated recoils, a kangaroo with two spider legs.

"Patrick," called the librarian, "relax, have a drink or two. After all today’s holiday shares your name." But he didn’t hear, hadn’t even tried. He clomped, clumped, wheezing curses and foul oaths, until he fell down the stairs, shedding batteries, click and clank from his ears, forehead, stockings, groin, and Achilles’ heels. At the bottom of the stairs, he rolled through a children’s reading circle, slammed into a wall, and then a child’s chant chilled his blood.

An ugly little girl, who wore a tapered tin-foil hat, banged a wooden hammer against a wooden shoe and chanted,

"Tip tap, rip-rap,

Tick-a-tack-too!"

"No, for the lord of Christ! Stop that awful chant!" thundered Patrick.

The little girl trembled, and cried, "Tip tap, rip-rap," as she hurled her hammer at Patrick. He tried to get to his feet and avoid the hammer, but to no avail. It struck him in the back of the neck as the little girl screamed, "Take-a-that, too!" Librarians and near by adults charged toward Patrick and helped him to his feet. Meanwhile, the children gathered around the ugly little girl, taking up her chant, "Tip tap, rip-rap. Take-a-that, too!"

Those surrounding Patrick withdrew in horror when a terrifyingly loud electrical hum issued from Patrick’s head as he transformed into a humpback. The humpbacked Nike logician roared and ran into the streets, galumphing with one foot swollen and the other blistered, both hands swatting at his hump while he manically swiveled his head, as though he might rid himself of new encumbrance with outrage and incredulity.

Now, the townspeople disliked Patrick, the Nike logician. They generally steered clear of him and pretended not to notice him until they caught him playing games with their extension cords and shoes, their fuse boxes and slippers. Parents warned their children: if you do—or don’t do—this, that, or the other, you’ll end up like him. Because of both Patrick’s transformation and the drunkenness of the passers by—it was the St. Patrick’s Day—folks paused and gawked, a latent but now awakened tension of terror and amazement. Some gasped, others laughed. Many had flippant commentary. Patrick, for his part, wished for a drink, and another and another and another. Most especially, he wished for the drunkenness and the solitude in which he might consider his lost shoes (he couldn’t go back for them, not with the little witches chanting), his hump, and the connections between his hump, the witch’s chants, his lost shoes, and that snide voice in his head, foreign, ancient, and contemptuous.

He galumphed to his house, a tool shed adjutant to his mother’s home. His tool shed leaned at whatever angle the wind decreed. It was bent, burnt, and, on the side opposite his mother’s home, stood a rusty complex of electrical transformers, generators, and wires, which hummed an eighty-decibel chant, Georgian but without the intimation of soul. Above his tool shed’s door, hung a sign that read, "Dr. Patrick O’Reilly: Logician/Cobblerator. He shouldered through the door and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. He fled for parts unknown, a place where he was less likely to encounter the caseworkers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, drunkards, and mad persons who tended to barge in on his high-tech cobbler concerns. Stocking footed and humpbacked, he loped, ignoring the pain of one foot swollen and the other blistered while he swatted at his hump. He stuck to back alleys where he encountered only indigents who ignored him, as he was neither police nor penny-ante drug dealer.

His blistered foot hit a half-removed manhole; he roared and fell into the sewer system, landing in a current of civic sewage. He slid and cursed. Wide yellow and beady red eyes darted and danced in the distance, regarding the creature in their midst. His hump pulsed, and he felt, not heard, an electrical hum inside his hump. He sat up in the stream of civic sewage, opened his bottle, drank copiously, and thought, If I can’t rid myself of this hump, I can’t work...and thus, the soldiers won’t have their shoes, and, then he screamed, "I won’t get my just deserts." He took another swig, sighed, and stared at the bestial eyes boring into him—bobbing and weaving, hissing and squeaking. He slapped his hump and thought, I don’t drink in sewers, I deduce; ergo this hump must go—it is abomination.

Revolted, he leapt to his swollen and blistered feet and bumped his hump against the sewer’s cement top. He heard and felt his electrical hum as it pervaded the logically demarcated portions of his skull; its power was similar to a hurricane rearranging office partitions. He passed out and fell into the civic sewage. The Nike logician twitched and flopped, and then, floating down the sewer, coasted the current of civic sewage while his hump served as rudder and then anchor, guiding and then catching against a municipal ridge.

Along the way he dreamed of falling down a cliff, and being held over the sea by his hump, and then that a lion had him by the same hump, and was running away with him, and then that it was put up for a target for soldiers to shoot at. After several barrages of gunfire, he dreamt that he had died and then he found himself in a chicken coop, surrounded by peeping chicks the size of Labradors. Each chick wore tapered tinfoil hats, and one said chick said to another "He hasn’t any taste." Another chick answered, "Nor Discretion," and a third chick said, "Since the transmitter’s down, let’s get to work," and they began to peck into his hump and lacerate it with their claws.

He woke and saw, at the end of the tunnel, a soft supernatural light, truly gently, graceful, but mysterious, unclassifiable—ergo, his bile rose. He began to bark mutely when he heard the sound of one object sticking a softer object. He heart skipped beats and sweat beaded his brow when he heard the following chant,

"Ti-tip tap dat, rip-damn-rap

Tick-a-accursed-ta-tack too

‘Cause my magic now makes only rotgut,

plastic shoes.

Tip a-blast it!

Tip tap, rip-rap

Take-a-dat-webcam offa my rath!

Cause I wanna go home

Tip, tap, rip-a-damned-rap

Tick-a-terrible materials too

This keen miser-fairy hath

hid in Postal Card—HA!—subtext

popular imagination that

nat-a-rat-alized

my gold for the

IMF’s or some

vainglorious purse.

Patrick leaped to his feet, and again bumped his hump against the top of the sewer. The chanting stopped. He was mortified because it was the voice that infiltrated his dreams and haunted his days, that snide voice foreign, ancient, and contemptuous, and, it wasn’t in just his head, compromising his ability to use his head, but was several yards ahead of him, thought silenced, hiding. Also, the chant angered him for its last phrase struck him as inflammatory—he had lost his official standing as Nike logician when he and a renegade IMF consultant had forced wheels onto Charity Christmas shoes, and subsequently, accidents had happened, split skulls, broken bones, tears and outrage. Though it had occurred to Patrick, then and since, over and over, that the IMF consultant wasn’t a consultant at all, but more nefarious, perhaps even demonic…though they had gotten on so well.

Patrick roared and charged down the sewer, toward the gentle supernatural lighting, the silenced chanting, through the civil sewage, galumphing with one foot swollen and the other blistered, all the way pummeling his hump with his hands. The circular sewer ended abruptly, an antechamber in the civil cesspool, a crossing of two sewers, above which stood a platform thatched of sticks, straws, and plastic debris that rested several yards above the civic sewage. He was beside himself, outraged and amazed.

The thatched platform hosted barrels of rotgut, a bed, and a wicker birdcage that contained a figurine of St. Patrick that was fused with melted candy wrappers to a perch. Strewn everywhere across the platform were the tools of the traditional cobbler—strips of leather, tacks, glues, and sundry tools. A diminutive volume, bound with twine, called The Dubiously Complied Poems of Esirt prominently occupied a miniature lectern, again thatched of twigs and plastic refuse. Leaning against a keg of rotgut stood the leprechaun poet, Esirt IV, his arms crossed, his lips drawn tightly, as though disgusted. He had a wooden hammer folded between his arms and angrily tapped his toes. The toe tappings made no sound but stirred a sensation that stirred Patrick’s hump, a melodious intrusion against his hump’s electrical hum. Esirt IV’s feet were clad in shoes of white marble and he wore an ornate tinfoil hat. Esirt IV snorted and said, "Given the ponderous weight of your wisdom, you’ve deduced I’ve no gold, for you’ve eavesdropped on my compromised song, so you may as well go away."

"But," Patrick swallowed his anger, his outrage, "I’d like a drink, I…I, lost my bottle. I…I, uhm, I lost my shoes." Patrick stared at the marble white shoes, like a starved glutton before a suckling pig, desperately eyeing the decorative apple while stroking the feast’s spine.

Esirt IV snorted, reached into his breast pocket, produced a joint, and said, "You know this is only damned thing that grows well in this environment? that American tobacco is awful? that it’s irradiated? So, you say you’d like a drink?"

"Yes. I really need a drink, I dropped my bottle, lost my shoes." Patrick cried, "You see, a witch cursed me." Esirt IV laughed; the Nike logician slapped his hump. "Please, give me a drink, please?" begged the humpbacked logician. He stared at Esirt IV ’s white marble shoes and slapped victorious Nike swishes where they didn’t belong, weren’t welcome.

Esirt IV grimaced and said, "Well, do as you will, but don’t convince yourself that you’ve an invitation." Patrick pulled himself into the platform; his weight made it sag. He sat and groaned, "A drink please, please for the love of Christ?" Esirt IV winced.

"I’ll stand you a drink, if you don’t say that name again." Esirt IV replied.

"Christ?"

"Don’t say it thrice, or I shan’t oblige your wish for a drink, but may instead drop mischief onto your head." Esirt IV tapped a keg, poured some rotgut into a mug, handed it to the Nike logician, and said, "You’ve got a staring problem. Let off my shoes; they’re not yours."

"So what’s your problem with—?"

"What’s with your hump? You’ve been warned, wanted another lump?" Esirt IV growled and as he pointed his hammer upward it transformed into a glittering magic wand. "I’ll double your woe, pal" It was then that Patrick thought, Both that ugly little witch and this nasty little leprechaun have tinfoil hats. He became frightened, guzzled the contents of his mug, and begged for another glass.

"One more, and on your way, you’ve ruined my day. I can’t stand the breath of you all," replied Esirt IV. He refilled Patrick’s mug, handed it to him, and then, cringing, retreated further downwind from his interlocutor.

"Please, tell me one thing. Why do you wear a tinfoil hat?" Patrick guzzled a second glass, stood up, subdued his terror, and poured himself another. He drained it, poured another, and stared lecherously at the leprechaun’s marble shoes.

"Because they’re singing your song," answered Esirt IV. Patrick sneered, emptied his glass, and poured himself another.

"What are you talking about?"

"The electrical hum, that hymn of the vainglorious, it goes back to your namesake, even earlier, you fool." Patrick leaped toward Esirt IV, grabbing for his feet. Esirt IV dived out of the Nike logician’s path (his white marble shoes made him than much faster), brandished his wand, and screamed, "Bring down the hump!" The Nike logician suddenly felt a warm and warty mass fall onto his neck, and, before, he finished screaming, "I’ll have those shoes, hold their patents, so help me God!" he grew a second hump next to his first one. It took several seconds for the Nike logician to overcome his disbelief. Esirt IV laughed.

The humpbacked logician roared, clawed at his pair of humps, and then chased Esirt IV until Esirt IV shrugged his shoulders, stood still, and said, "Oh well, I long since heard, recited, read and annotated this story. What’s the harm of another go around, another wrinkle or two, notwithstanding vulgarity?" Patrick grabbed Esirt IV, shoved him into the wicker birdcage, and ran through the sewers (galumphing, swatting his humps with his free hand while roaring like a crazed beast) until he arrived at his tool shed home.

He sat the birdcage in a corner, paced the floor, and growled, "Now see if I don’t get those shoes. We’ll just see, you wee little freak." He sat at his desk and began to plan how to change shoe size, to translate magic into technology. Esirt IV, not in the least disturbed, preformed acrobatic stunts as he leapt from one perch to another. After Patrick scribbled hundreds of untenable if thens, incredible then possiblys, obtuse consequentlys, he heard a loud rapping at the door of this tool shed.

"Not now, mother. Go away. I’m about to—"

"It’s not your mother, vain fool," thundered Esirt IV. He executed an entrechat, leaped from one perch to another and moonwalked across the perch as he lit another joint. The rapping grew louder. He heard angry children, howling dogs, slurring drunks, and a chorus of high-pitched snide voices, foreign, ancient, and contemptuous. Patrick, the Nike logician, deduced that an angry mob had gathered outside his door.

He ran to his telephone, pressed speed dial, and said, "Mother, mother, pick up, pick up, and call the cops for me."

"She’s not going to answer your call, she’s reading The Legend of Fergus or something wacky by Yeats to her grandchildren, you jackass." said Esirt IV as he blew smoke rings which, after crossing the bars of the wicker cage, transformed into hammers, claws, tin foil hats, and dancing leprechauns and other shapes that burnt the Nike logician’s eyes. His heard his mother’s answering machine and Patrick realized that she wasn’t going to save him.

He opened the door and saw a mob of hundreds of ugly children, scrawny puppies, damp kittens, a dozen self-pitying drunks along for the show, and thousands of tin-foiled hat clad, weed-smoking leprechauns. In front of the mob was the ugly little girl whose acquaintance the logician had made earlier that day.

"Hand over our friend, our hero," demanded the little girl. The moon’s light struck her tinfoil hat, reflecting prismatic qualities.

"Go away. I’ll call the feds. He’s an illegal alien who’s in possession of illegal drugs, and also his shoes are an issue of national security."

"Hand him over," the girl growled, her anger growing as she waved her hammer threateningly. 9;

"Get off my property. Or I’ll call the feds and they’ll have your hero strapped to a table in an underground compound outside of Langley, Virginia, you little bitch-witch." 9;

"If you don’t hand him over, we’ll bring down more mischief onto you."

Patrick snorted, thumped his humps, and said, "Do your worst."

"All right, any alcoholic beverages you consume will turn into bile the second you swallow it."

Patrick laughed, and said, "Regardless of whether that happens or not, your hero remains in my custody." The mob left. Patrick slammed shut the door, cursed, and muttered, "Idiots, fools, a child witch and a leprechaun fairy." For a second he trembled, turned pale, but he soon overcame his terror.

Patrick returned to his notebooks, to a night of futile scribbling, until his thirst for alcohol, its warmth and its succor, possessed him. He grabbed a bottle of vodka, took a sip, swallowed, and endured the worst taste he’d ever imagined—the taste of burning bile that grew more viscous and increasingly painful as the vodka slid deeper into his body. Esirt IV hummed, danced, and continued his acrobatics, while smoking his inexhaustible joints. Patrick’s stomachache increased until he wretched. He wretched and wretched some more.

Patrick returned to his work, but got nothing done; he knew he was out of his league. He affected working, scribbling nonsense. The next evening, the mob arrived, and banged on his door. He opened angrily and wished that he had a shotgun, while knowing that with shotgun or without, with prayer or without, with the police or without, his story wouldn’t end with the victorious Nike swoosh of prestige that he had desired. Nevertheless, the Nike logician resolved to see the affair through to its end.

"Hand over our hero," demanded the ugly little girl. Her retinue of ugly children, scrawny puppies, wet kittens, self-pitying drunks, and weed smoking, tin-foil hat clad leprechauns cheered her on. She continued, waving her hammer in his face, "or we’ll bring down more mischief." The Nike logician again regarded the rich colors that flitted from her tin-foil hat.

"Do your worst," replied Patrick, drooping beneath the weight of his humps.

"Very well," said the ugly little girl, "Any food you swallow will return to its original form, and then, in a fashion most painful, escape from you."

"Regardless of whether that happens or not, your hero remains in my custody." The mob left, Esirt IV continued his tireless capers, and, as the tool shed became shrouded in Esirt IV’s smoke, Patrick, the Nike logician, sat down to a night of fruitless work. Chicken scratches, symbols that he couldn’t connect, that didn’t follow, that were nonsensical considered even in the paltry light of their own terms.

His stomach rumbled, louder and louder, until he could ignore it no more. His hunger increased until desperation drove him to eat one frozen and uncooked fish stick. Seconds later, a mixed multitude of fish transformed back into their original form, minnows, cod, catfish, flounder, carp, salmon, sturgeon, and pike. The fish swam and swam, battering his stomach, until they found intestine or esophagus. Patrick, the Nike Logician yelped and bleated, as fish exited from top and bottom, leaping from his mouth and squirming down his pant leg, one fish after another, until Patrick fell to his knees and cradled his humps in remorse. He roared and lamented in the pile of quavering fish for fifteen minutes. The leprechaun poet hummed a solemn medley, and then said, "Wee little freaks and their ugly witch friends aren’t to be trifled with, boy."

Eventually, Patrick’s pained ended. As his pain ended, his remorse vanished. He growled, returned to his notebooks, and redoubled his efforts, beyond fear, hope, and any pretense of rationality whatsoever. He scribbled the day away while he hummed along with his transformers and generators, bobbing his head and shaking his fist, as though he were listening to a rock song. The leprechaun poet watched, almost amazed.

The next night the mob arrived again. Patrick opened the door before the ugly little girl knocked and screamed, "Bring down your mischief. Your hero remains in my custody."

"Very well," she replied, brandishing her hammer, "we’ll take down your grid. We’ll hammer your transformers and generators into dust."

"That," roared Patrick, "will not be. Otherwise, I’ll murder your hero."

The retinue grasped, and Esirt IV said, "Release me, Nike logician, and you will have your shoes." Patrick, barely breathing, opened the wicker birdcage. Esirt IV leaped from his perch, left the cage, took off his marble white shoes, flung them toward the Nike logician, and scampered into the hand of the little girl, who had squatted to receive her hero.

Patrick grabbed the tiny shoes, and screamed, "But how will I—" and then shoes grew. The Nike logician, grunting and moaning with lecherous pleasure, slipped into the shoes.

He jumped out of his tool shed and leaped into the next county. He ran faster and faster still until he crossed continents and seas, again and again, faster and faster around and around the globe until, while leapfrogging back from one pole to the other, he left the atmosphere and, running faster and faster, he entered the Van Allen Radiation Belts, where he heard the greatest electrical hum he had ever imagined. The hum so bewitched him that he slowed down to listen but his ecstasy was such that he didn’t realize that the radiation had burnt off his humps and then that he had began to fall back down to earth.

He stopped running, sat on the wing of a commercial airplane and rejoiced over the supra-electrical hum he had heard. He exalted. He reflected without the fetters of syllogisms. He leaped from the plane’s wing (as the shutters of camera blinked at him from inside the airplane) and ran home as fast he could. He found Esirt IV and his retinue in a groove of trees nearby his tool shed. He landed, removed the shoes, which returned to their proper size, approached Esirt IV, who stood in the little girl’s hand, and said, "These belong to you. May I be your apprentice?"

"You’re interrupting. I’m about to recite a poem of mine, in the original tongue. But a stick around, have a glass of rotgut."

"I’d like that very much, but I’ve a grid to take down first," replied Patrick, as he took the wooden hammer offered to him by the little girl. As Patrick, the former Nike logician, ran toward his tool shed he wondered about the dimensions, the structure, the aesthetic of his own coveted tin-foil hat.