VV(7) - 1

[JBFRAME at aol.com]

I.
Back to the present.  Our sailor becomes a Huntsman.  We begin with the hunt 
- not much in the way of an epic - our Cold War veteran in his shitty 
volunteer job with Angel and Geronimo (!) in the sewers of New York (no 
mention of any kind of salary).  The boss is Zeitsuss (the name, meaning 
"sweet-time" might be an allusion to the youth of the Alligator Patrol 
members we are most concerned with - or could it refer to that lovely 
Eisenhower era in History? -- discuss).  He is part of a motley army of 
misfits & relics of the 20th century (Oswiecim-Auschwitz is mentioned).  In 
pursuit of the piebald alligator with a seeming death-wish, he comes across 
the erstwhile chapel of one Father Fairing, S.J., former minister at the 
beginning of the Great Depression to some of the same kind of people who now 
constitute the Alligator Patrol.  After a dreadful epiphany he appoints 
himself missionary to the rats (who may inherit the earth after the demise of 
civilization) to whom he has given the names of selected saints.  

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07639c.htm 
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07644a.htm 
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07647a.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15362a.htm

The priest is obliged to consume three of his flock each day to keep from 
starving.
"Here in this room an old man had killed and boiled a catechumen, had 
committed sodomy with a rat, had discussed a rodent nunhood with V., a future 
saint - depending on which story you listened to."  A theme running through 
TRP's work is real or imagined discourse between animals & humans.  Benny 
apologizes to the alligator just before he blasts it with his shotgun.  This 
also reminded me of the Sioux & Cheyenne, how they asked the buffalo 
forgiveness before the hunt.  (Another commentator has likened the alligators 
& their weariness with existence to the Herero in Mondaugen's story in 
Chapter 9.)  Keep in mind for further discussion.  We are treated to excerpts 
from Fr. Fairing's journal, which is now "…preserved in an inaccessible 
region of the Vatican library, and in the minds of the few old-timers in the 
New York Sewer Department who got to see it when it was discovered.
A lot of food for thought here.