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February 1967

You’re still drinking, friend? Then you’re just the man I want to see. Want to ask you a question. Over here, where we won’t be disturbed.

Question’s this: Wonder if you’ve seen my dragon? Name of Beastly. Nice little guy. For a dragon. Green, with pink spots. Believe me, you couldn’t miss ole Beastly!

I was sobbing my eyes out one night because the park bench I was on was going through red lights and I was scared stiff. Suddenly this dragon whammed into the bench and stopped it cold. If I’d thought I was scared before, Friend, now I was petrified. A dragon! Imagine!

“What’th the matter with you, Mithter?” he asked, and that started me laughing like a school kid. Somehow you can’t be really scared of a dragon that lisps.

“Thtop laughing!” he fumed, and believe me, Friend, I thtopped. I mean stopped. On second thought, you can be scared of a lisping dragon, especially when he closes the damper and flames shoot out of his mouth.

“Thanks for stopping the bench,’’ I said.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.’’ At least he was modest.

Turned out the li’l fella didn’t have a name, so I called him Beastly, which described him pretty well. Besides, he liked the name. Beastly also liked the smell of sherry. He always came around when I drank it, and sometimes stayed for days after.

Usually, however, he would disappear when I was broke and had to work for a day or two (as a rule I took a position as Asst. Director of a Dishwashing Dept., Wet Arms Division), but Beastly always showed up again when I got a crock of sherry.

When Beastly stopped that park bench he was about three feet long, but it was amazing how he grew. About a foot a month. At first, he was fun to play with. Throw sticks, that sort of thing. He’d bring ’em back unless he got confused and burned ’em up. But in six months it got to the point where he could stop a Sherman tank with his breath, the ground shook under him when he ran, and if he ran too close to me, the wind would knock me down.

Once a cop found me in that position and asked, “What’s the matter with you, fella?” I said, “It was Beastly,” and he agreed, but wouldn’t accept it as an answer. Then he smelled the sherry and hauled me off to the cooler, which was dragon proof.

I never saw Beastly again. You see, an AA visited me in jail last month and I got on the program, and since they don’t allow spotted dragons to join…

Well, I smelled the sherry on you, Friend, and just thought you might have seen my old pet Beastly. Greatest little dragon I ever met.

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