Niagara Falls All Over Again

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This story — like most of the stories in the history of the world — begins far away from Des Moines, Iowa.

It starts with two men — one thin, one fat — dressed in tuxedos, walking down a black-and-white street arm-in-arm. The fat man keeps stumbling. At one point he falls and manages to land on his high silk hat. The fat man will always land on his hat, and the thin man will always help him up, whack him over the head, and replace it.

“I don’t want to do this, Professor,” the fat man pleads in a childish voice.

“You’ll be fine,” says the thin man, who, befitting his name, wears a mortarboard instead of a top hat. He drags the fat man up a set of stairs into a white church and through the flung-back doors and down the aisle to a sudden wedding march. Though both men are rotten marchers, they make it to the altar, where a minister opens a Bible in a chiding way: there’s no good reason to be late to your own wedding, even if your bride is a pony. Which she is, a chubby, swaybacked roan pony whose hindquarters keep shifting — she’s not thrilled about the match either. In this world, everyone wears a hat; the pony’s is straw, trimmed with a net veil thrown over her shoulders. The fat man sneaks sugar cubes to his intended. The pony has a history of bolting.

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