Andy Andrews and the Phenomenal Fungi
Some are delicious while some are deadly. Some are medicinal while some are trippy. And some are this…
A very old friend picked up a copy of my book Seeking Morels. He said it was “fine story telling.” I then discovered he had written and performed a song about mushroom hunting. The incident inspired me to write this short story. For Andy Brogan. Enjoy.
Outside the local Village Market & Deli a man dropped his quarters into the newsrack. He withdrew a copy of the Evening Leader. The newspaper’s front page depicted a man’s mugshot with headline reading: “Escaped Convict: DANGER!”
“Andy? Andy Andrews, is that you?”
The man looked up from the paper.
“Oh, hey. Didn’t recognize you at first.” The two shook hands. “Haven’t seen you in these parts since… high school?”
“Yup,” C. said. “Moved to Phoenix. Just visiting family.”
“Nice, hey I really enjoyed your book.”
“Yes, thank you. I had no idea you were an aficionado of the mushroom—your mushroom song was great!”
“Haha. Thanks man. You should join me for a hunt,” Andy said.
“For real?”
“If you’ve got the time.”
“I’m on vacation, I got the time. Let’s plan it.”
“I’ve been meaning to comb my old Grandpappy’s woods,” Andy said. “Haven’t been out there in years… It’s behind the old condemned Brookside Laboratories. You know the place?”
“Sure, I know it.”
“How’s this Saturday?” Andy asked.
C. checked the calendar on his phone nodding in the affirmative.
“How’s four in the afternoon?” Andy asked.
“Four’s good.”
It was a fine Saturday afternoon as the two began their ravenous search for the recluse of the forest floor.
“Hey there, C. watch out! There’s a big widow maker up in that elm.”
C. quickly side stepped away. “Thanks, good eye.”
“Lots of things to kill you out here,” Andy said.
“Like that escaped convict?”
“Haha, hope not. Did read the paper—he was in for murder.”
“For real?”
“Yeah man, there’s a legit murderer on the loose.”
C. gulped—a decade of suburban living had made him soft and spongy… like a mushroom.
Andy patted a discreet lump under his shirt. “I’m always packin’, brother.”
C. exhaled a sigh of relief. “I got my concealed carry license in an effort to know what I’m doing… but I feel… I feel like a psychopath whenever I carry.”
“Haha,” Andy looked up from a hunk of bark he had been investigating. “Should I be the one worried?”
They perused the woodland floor in silence for a time.
“Here’s a little trove of beauties!” Andy hollered. Gently he plucked a morel and nestled it in the sack.
C.’s cellphone rang marring the hallowed moment of discovery. Quickly he pinched his pocket silencing the blasphemous sound.
Andy shook his head. “Bringing a cellphone out on a hunt. What a suburbanite you’ve become.”
A moment later the ruckus in his pocket disturbed the sanctity of discovery for a second time. With a look of defeated helplessness he answered.
“Hey Hunny, what is it? Oh… geez.” C. checked the time on the phone, “Didn’t know it got so late… Yeah… Yes, I’ll be back soon… not far.” C. hung up. “Dang it, Andy, I lost track of time. I’m meeting with the grandparents for dinner.”
“No worries man, I mean, I’m gonna eat all these big fat spongy yellows without you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. I’m just thrilled we could do this. As an author of a book with reference to morel hunting—I gotta get out here to remember what it’s like.”
“Alright man, whatever trips your trigger.”
They shook hands. C. left the woodlands. Andy listened intently to the hum of C.’s car ebb away. Solemnity and solitude settled over the quiet woods. Andy held up the mesh bag. Within were a solid skillet-full’s worth of some of the most desirable morels he had ever beheld. He shivered and felt more than just salivation glands and stomach rumblings—these morels held an augury of which he could not tell.
He jumped in his ol’ Chevy pickup and once home immediately sautéed the whole batch. He was right, they were beyond delectable. They were divine—rare manna sprung up from the earth.
Feeling satiated he set to cleaning up the kitchen. The newspaper of the escaped convict still laid on the counter top, and he used it to mop up some of the grease-splatter around the stovetop. He started feeling a little weird: a piss-shimmer in his groin for no reason, a tickle in his ear like a cicada drumming it's tymbals, a light prickle in his fingernails and toenails as though he had a fungus there…
“Hmm… that’s… unusual.”
He tossed the greased newspaper. From the fridge he fetched the water pitcher, took a long cooling drink, topped it off at the tap and returned it to the fridge. Magnetized there on the fridge door was a business card with a poison control hotline. With a shake, he told himself to get a nerve.
He fetched his mushroom field guide from the side table and settled into the Barcalounger.
“Just to cool me down,” he said, flipping through the well-worn pages. He poured over images and notes. “I don’t know, man… Andy, be honest with yourself. Yeah, I’m feelin’ pretty weird.”
The ten foot walk to the fridge had him swooning.
“Oh, God.”
He looked at the numbers on the poison control card as they floated from the paper burning out like phosphorescent sparks rising off a psychedelic campfire. He fumbled with his cellphone, but the neon dyslexia distorted the buttons beyond comprehension.
“Oh, God,” he repeated aloud.
Swooning again he eased himself onto the linoleum floor. His mind traveling out from his body in a sensation like roots spreading through soil. He felt his brain creating new connections across townships, across counties, across states. A cacophony of words drummed his ears as though he were in a stadium of one hundred thousand people.
At one moment his level of consciousness was alert, then seemingly dormant, then closed and then so vast and expansive. Pagan philosophies of being one with the universe flooded his mind. His Christian upbringing rebuked the notions.
“Oh, God,” now spoken more as a prayer, “don’t let me die.”
The thunderous voices ceased. One small voice remained:
“I ain’t goin’ out. Not yet.”
And then distinct, another voice, “Don’t worry. The canoe will be here ta’mara’ afternoon.”
“Get it here by mornin’ gawdammit! They’re closin’n on us!”
Andy heard these strange words traveling towards him through the earth and lost consciousness for a time.
A grey dawn peeked through the kitchen window. Andy recumbent on the linoleum had slept in his cloths and all—even his firearm concealed under shirt. He saw his phone lying on the floor where he must have dropped it in his delirium. He pocketed it and rose cautiously. A feeling of strength, a clarity of mind and an equilibrium in the inner ear of epic proportions filled him with a sense of heroism.
Then following his mushroom induced premonitions, he traveled across town towards the old canal lock. He pulled his Chevy to the shoulder and crept down the tow path into a wooded area. He crept deeper into the foliage following this new mycelium telepathy.
“Mycelium telepathy? More like insanity. What am I doing?” he asked himself in a moment of doubt.
He crouched and splayed both hands on the earth. Immediately the sense of strong tendrils spread from his fingertips. Again he heard words come to his mind.
“They’re comin’.”
“Get rid a’ this crap for me, will ya’? Just burn it or somethin’.”
The sound of a chair knocking around, a door creaking on a hinge.
Feeling only a little insane, Andy moved ahead and soon spotted a cabin smothered in woodland overgrowth. A sinister face peered out from an ajar door and in an instant Andy recognized the newspaper mugshot.
“Oh hell…” He dialed 911 relaying the news in muffled whispers. Beginning to creep back he heard sounds of another vehicle. Through the trees he saw a truck with a canoe strapped on back.
“Uh-oh.”
Nerves clenching, he sent his mind out across the woodland floor. He felt the mycelium alive and peaceful. He felt the colonized hyphae slowly push fruity bodies through the soil. They sensed his telepathic touch shivering in response and released their spores. Nothing exceptional happened.
“That’s it!?” Andy whispered in exasperation.
With one hand he rubbed his forehead, with the other he fingered his firearm.
“Don’t try to be a hero,” he said to himself and hunkered behind a rotting tree joining his fungal friends in their silent vigil.
“I don’t know who the hell’s truck that is. I don’t like it.”
“Should I slash the tires?”
The sound of a thump on the back of a head.
“And make a scene? Settle down boy.”
The men lumbered nearby him: two in front, one old, one young, each with rifles. Two more followed. Their heads were hidden inside the canoe they carried atop their shoulders.
More cars drew up on the road yonder: police cruisers.
Church bells rang in the distance, counting the strikes of this impromptu standoff—law enforcement in droves versus the escaped convict and his crew. Greatly outnumbered and having little stake in the game, the henchmen quickly waved the white flag. All were cuffed and patty-wagoned.
“Andrews?” the sheriff asked to the woods. “You still out here? It’s safe now. Come on out.”
“Howdy, Sheriff,” Andy called as he emerged from behind the rotten tree.
“Great work, Andy, providing us with the slip. What brought you out here anyways?”
“Uh, mushroom hunting…”
“Is that a fact? A morel man, huh? Well excellent work. ’Cause of you the countryside is safe.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes me your friendly countryside Morel-man.”
The Sheriff cocked his head to one side and asked, “You feelin’ a’right?”
“I guess I’m feelin’ a little weird—like I’m losing my mind.”
“Probably experiencing shock. Come down to the station. Debrief over a cuppa’ coffee.”
“Thanks, I’d like that.”
He sensed the fruity bodies on the woodland floor sway in farewell. From the roadside he turned back and saluted them. And he knew he would never be the same.
The End… or The Beginning?
Morel-Man and mycelium telepathy are trademarks of C. M. Setledge. Copyright © C. M. Setledge.
Did you know you can read the very book referenced in the story? Take a peek here:
Questions for consideration:
Have you ever “Charlie Kaufman-ed” yourself into a story? If so, link your story in the comments!
If you could have any superpower in the world would it be mycelium telepathy? If not, then what?