Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker Plot Summary

Introduction

In a rain-soaked palace near Seattle, Princess Leigh-Cheri Furstenberg-Barcalona sits in her attic cell, contemplating a pack of Camel cigarettes by moonlight. The year is somewhere in the final quarter of the twentieth century, and the world teeters between apocalypse and renewal. Outside her blackened windows, blackberry vines creep ever closer to the walls like nature's own rebellion against civilization. This is no ordinary princess, and these are no ordinary times. Leigh-Cheri has abandoned her privileged life for love, sequestering herself in voluntary imprisonment while her outlaw lover Bernard Mickey Wrangle, the notorious Woodpecker, rots in a federal penitentiary. Both are redheads in a world that seems increasingly hostile to their kind, both believers in romance in an age that has forgotten its meaning. What begins as a story of impossible love transforms into something far stranger, a cosmic conspiracy involving ancient pyramids, extraterrestrial visitors from the planet Argon, and a cigarette package that may hold the key to humanity's future. The moon watches over it all, indifferent yet somehow complicit in the madness that unfolds when two souls refuse to accept that love cannot stay.

Chapter 1: The Princess and the Woodpecker: Meeting at Care Fest

Hawaii's tropical air thrummed with the energy of the Geo-Therapy Care Fest, a gathering of environmentalists, visionaries, and world-savers converging on Maui to chart humanity's course. Princess Leigh-Cheri had traveled from her exile home near Seattle with dreams of creating a monarchy of Mu, uniting deposed royalty in service to the planet. At twenty, she carried herself with the determined grace of someone who believed princesses could still rescue the world. The conference was already in chaos when she arrived. A mysterious explosion had damaged the Pioneer Inn, forcing organizers to relocate to Banyan Park. Amid the palm shadows and displaced delegates, she first encountered him, a man whose presence seemed to bend reality around its edges. He wore black everything and Donald Duck sunglasses, his teeth a testament to too many jails and not enough dentists. When she tried to ignore his whispered mantra of "yum," he leaned close with breath that smelled of tequila and danger. "There are two mantras," he said, grinning like a jackal with secrets. "Yum and yuk. Mine is yum." She learned his name was Bernard, though she wouldn't discover for days that Bernard Mickey Wrangle was the infamous Woodpecker, bomber of government buildings and folk hero of the antiwar movement. What struck her first was his hair, red as her own, burning like copper wire in the Hawaiian sun. It was as if the universe had sent her a mirror wrapped in revolution. Their first date unfolded on a stolen sailboat under stars that seemed personally arranged for their benefit. He fed her Hostess Twinkies and spoke of outlaws as the antibodies of civilization, necessary irritants that kept society from calcifying into death. She found herself telling him things she'd never told anyone, about the loneliness of being royal in a world that had forgotten magic, about her desperate need to matter. When she finally arrested him for the hotel bombing, it was almost an afterthought. Old Gulietta, her ancient chaperon, had witnessed the deed and pointed him out with gnarled fingers. But by then the damage was done. By then the moon had claimed them both.

Chapter 2: Love Amidst Explosions: Hawaii's Lunar Romance

The arrest was theater, both of them playing roles in a drama whose script seemed written by forces beyond their understanding. Leigh-Cheri marched Bernard to the authorities with the determination of duty, but her heart hammered against her ribs like a caged bird. When he told her his real identity, she felt the world tilt on its axis. The Woodpecker. The man who turned government buildings into brief, beautiful fireworks. "I'm delighted that we're getting to be friends," he said, handcuffed in the police station. "I would have left Maui right after the boom-boom if it hadn't been for you." Their courtship unfolded in stolen moments between his legal proceedings. On a secluded beach, she watched him demonstrate impossible skills, standing in horse stirrups to knock mangoes from trees with thrown knives, his body moving with the fluid precision of someone who'd learned to make every gesture count. She told him about her theory of love as the ultimate outlaw, ungovernable and wild. The night before his transfer to federal prison, they made love on his boat while the Pacific rocked beneath them like a cradle. He showed her Chinese birth control herbs and taught her about lunaception, how women could synchronize their cycles with the moon's phases. She felt something fundamental shift inside her, as if her body was remembering ancient rhythms it had forgotten. "Outlaws are can openers in the supermarket of life," he told her, his fingers tracing constellations across her freckled skin. She understood then that he wasn't just a bomber but something rarer, a man who'd refused to let the world diminish him into ordinariness. When dawn came, federal agents arrived to take him away. She watched from her hotel window as they loaded him into a van, his red hair catching the early light like a signal fire being extinguished. The moon, pale as a ghost in the morning sky, seemed to mock them both.

Chapter 3: Parallel Imprisonment: Cells of Stone and Attic

Nine months passed like a slow fever. Bernard sat in solitary confinement at McNeil Island, his cell a concrete box with one high window and a single light bulb. The guards gave him cigarettes but no matches, afraid he'd somehow transform fire into freedom. He left the Camels unopened, studying the package with the intensity of a monk contemplating scripture. Meanwhile, Leigh-Cheri created her own prison in the attic of her family's rambling house. She painted the windows black, furnished the space with only a cot, a chamber pot, and her own pack of Camels. Her parents, the exiled King Max and Queen Tilli, watched in bewilderment as their daughter transformed herself into a hermit for love. "This is not an easy time to be a princess," she explained to anyone who would listen, though few understood. The world had moved beyond fairy tales, or so it seemed. Romance itself felt like an endangered species, hunted to near extinction by divorce statistics and sexual politics. Each day blended into the next in her self-imposed exile. She ate prison food, slept on bare foam, and studied the Camel package with growing fascination. There were pyramids on that package, she realized, and a camel that seemed to hold secrets in its patient eyes. The word CHOICE appeared in mirror-reversed lettering, defying the normal laws of reflection. Old Gulietta brought her meals and emptied her waste, the two of them communicating in the ancient language of service and devotion. Sometimes Gulietta would bring news from the outside world, fragments of a reality that seemed increasingly distant and irrelevant. Bernard's appeals had been denied. His sentence stretched ahead like a desert with no oasis in sight. On nights when the full moon penetrated her one clear windowpane, Leigh-Cheri felt her body responding to rhythms older than civilization. She was learning to read the moon's phases in her blood, becoming something more and less than human in her devotion to impossible love.

Chapter 4: The Camel Pack Revelation: Discovering Cosmic Choice

Winter deepened into a kind of hibernation, the princess wrapped in solitude like a chrysalis. The Camel package became her Bible, its every detail memorized and contemplated. She learned that the design had been created by a red-haired lithographer who'd disappeared after completing his work, leaving behind only this encrypted message from another dimension. The pyramids on the package weren't random decoration, she realized, but beacons from the lost civilization of the Red Beards. These ancient beings had built the great monuments of earth before vanishing into the anti-universe, trapped there by their blonde Argonian enemies. Now they were trying to communicate across dimensional barriers, using the most ubiquitous objects of twentieth century life as their transmission devices. Every dollar bill carried a pyramid. Every pack of Camels displayed their cosmic architecture. It was the most successful information campaign in human history, hidden in plain sight. The Red Beards were teaching humanity about choice, about the power to select one's own path rather than accepting the predetermined scripts offered by society. She began to understand that her red hair wasn't a genetic accident but a receiving antenna, tuned to frequencies that others couldn't detect. Bernard, locked in his cell with his own cigarette package, must be receiving the same transmissions. They were part of something larger than romance, soldiers in a war between lunar and solar forces that had been raging since before recorded time. The revelation came with a cost. The more she learned about cosmic conspiracies, the more isolated she became from ordinary human concerns. When reporters called seeking interviews about her environmental initiatives, their questions sounded like the buzzing of insects. The world's problems seemed suddenly trivial compared to the vast galactic drama unfolding behind the scenes. But even cosmic consciousness couldn't fill the Bernard-shaped hole in her heart. She missed his crooked grin, his tequila-scented breath, the way he made destruction sound like a form of poetry. The moon might be calling, but it was a cold companion compared to warm flesh and beating hearts.

Chapter 5: Desert Betrayal: From Heartbreak to Pyramid

The letter arrived like a poisoned arrow through her meditation. Bernard had somehow smuggled it out of prison, his words delivered by a grizzled ex-convict named Perdy Birdfeeder. As Leigh-Cheri read, her cosmic theories crumbled into dust. "If you think the Black Hole is bad," the letter began, "you should try it with baby ferrets hanging by their teeth from the skin of your testicles." He was furious that their private love had become a public spectacle, angry that dozens of copycat lovers had locked themselves away in imitation of her gesture. "You prompted," he wrote. "I guess you can take the girl out of the movement, but you can't take the movement out of the girl." The words hit her like physical blows. After everything she'd sacrificed, everything she'd learned, he saw her only as another naive world-saver. Their love was nothing more than "barking at the moon," a meaningless howl in the darkness. She emerged from the attic transformed, her heart armored against further betrayal. If Bernard could dismiss their connection so casually, she would show him what true dismissal looked like. The Arab businessman A'ben Fizel had been courting her family for months, offering marriage and unlimited resources. She sent for him. Fizel arrived transformed by love and determination, his body trimmed by diet and exercise until he resembled a desert prince from ancient tales. When she proposed building the world's first modern pyramid as both tourist attraction and scientific laboratory, he agreed without hesitation. The project would cost hundreds of millions, but money meant nothing compared to winning her hand. Their engagement became a transaction cloaked in romance. She would marry him when the pyramid was complete, and he would visit her chambers twice weekly until then. She told herself this was research, a practical education in pleasure divorced from love's complications. But when his curved member filled her body under desert stars, she couldn't deny the fire he ignited. The pyramid rose with impossible speed in the desert outside his capital city. Leigh-Cheri supervised every detail, ensuring it matched the Great Pyramid's dimensions and alignments. This would be her laboratory for unlocking pyramid power, her monument to the cosmic forces she'd discovered in her attic cell.

Chapter 6: Reunion in Stone: Trapped Between Life and Death

The pyramid's completion coincided with news of Bernard's death in an Algerian prison, shot while attempting escape. Leigh-Cheri absorbed the information with the detachment of someone who'd already grieved beyond tears. She would marry Fizel as planned, dedicating her life to pyramid research and the memory of what love had once meant. The wedding ceremony was scheduled for dawn, followed by the pyramid's public dedication. Leigh-Cheri spent her last night of freedom exploring the monument's inner chambers, saying goodbye to dreams of Red Beard contact and cosmic revelation. The central chamber echoed with emptiness, its perfect acoustics amplifying her footsteps into lonely thunder. She wasn't alone. A figure emerged from the shadows, red-haired and grinning despite months of imprisonment and a harrowing escape from North Africa. Bernard was alive, his death another case of mistaken identity involving stolen passports and criminal acquaintances. He'd come to rescue her, or at least to blow the top off her pyramid as an alternative wedding gift. Their reunion exploded with the force of suppressed longing. Words tumbled over each other as they tried to bridge months of separation and misunderstanding. He explained his harsh letter as a reaction to unwanted publicity, while she defended her marriage plans as practical necessity. Neither quite believed their own explanations. Before they could resolve anything, A'ben Fizel discovered them together. The betrayed groom's response was swift and final. He locked them in the pyramid's central chamber, telling the world that Zionist terrorists had kidnapped his bride. The thick stone walls would muffle any cries for help, and he alone possessed the key to their freedom. They were trapped together in the monument she'd built to house cosmic secrets, with nothing but wedding cake and champagne to sustain them. The pyramid's preservative powers would keep their bodies perfect for millennia, a romantic monument to love's ultimate failure.

Chapter 7: Blackberry Kingdom: Finding Home in the Rain

Weeks passed in their stone prison as search parties combed the desert for nonexistent kidnappers. Bernard and Leigh-Cheri rationed their supplies and explored the depths of their connection, finally free from the world's interruptions. He told her stories of Marcel Carné filming Children of Paradise under Nazi occupation, proving that beauty could flourish even in totalitarian darkness. She shared her cosmic theories, finding in him a worthy audience for impossible ideas. As their food dwindled to crumbs and their lamp oil guttered low, they faced the reality of death with surprising serenity. They'd found something rarer than survival in their stone womb, a love that transcended circumstance and time. When Leigh-Cheri rigged Bernard's dynamite to blow open their prison, she intended to shield his body with her own, sacrificing herself so he might escape. The explosion that followed defied conventional physics. In the microsecond before the blast, they seemed to fall through the Camel package itself, riding the pictured camel to safety in a desert oasis that existed only in the space between dimensions. They shared the same impossible dream of survival, rescued by the cosmic forces that had brought them together. They awoke in a clinic, deaf from the explosion but miraculously alive. Queen Gulietta, now ruler of her own small nation after Bernard's father's death, arrived with armed commandos to secure their release. A'ben Fizel's father, pragmatic to the end, handed them over rather than risk international incident over his son's romantic foolishness. Back in Seattle, they found the family home completely engulfed by blackberry vines, nature reclaiming the territory that civilization had briefly borrowed. They made a tunnel through the thorns and set up housekeeping in the vine-wrapped ruins, visited occasionally by Chuck the handyman who'd carved his own path to the television. Their damaged hearing required mechanical aids, small plastic devices about the size of cigarette packages. They made love in every room while rain drummed on the roof like applause from a cosmic audience. Sometimes strange lights flickered in the eastern sky, and they told each other they were ready when the final showdown between Red and Yellow Beards finally came.

Summary

In the end, Bernard and Leigh-Cheri discovered what every true lover learns too late and too well: that love's greatest mystery isn't how to make it stay, but how to recognize when it already has. Their journey from Hawaiian beaches to pyramid chambers had been less about external adventure than internal transformation, the slow alchemy that changes two separate hearts into something larger than their sum. The world outside their blackberry fortress continued its stumble toward millennium's end, but inside they'd found something more valuable than kingdoms or causes. The moon still rises over Puget Sound, indifferent to human suffering yet somehow complicit in human joy. Somewhere in the desert, a black pyramid stands as monument to love's power to transcend death itself. And in the rain-soaked Pacific Northwest, two red-haired outlaws practice the ancient art of barking at the moon, their voices joining the eternal chorus of those brave enough to love without guarantees. They'd learned the ultimate secret: that choice itself was the golden ball, the treasure that makes all other treasures possible. In a world bent on predetermination, they'd chosen each other across impossible odds, and that choice had made them free.

About Author

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Tom Robbins

Robbins investigates the intersection of humor, fantasy, and social commentary through his distinctive literary style. His writing, often categorized as "seriocomedies," combines playful optimism and eccentric characters to explore spiritual and cultural themes. Robbins' intuitive approach to writing, characterized by self-conscious wordplay and an average of three and a half years per book, results in novels that offer readers both entertainment and introspection. His major works include "Another Roadside Attraction," which creatively imagines a native of rural Washington stealing the mummy of Jesus Christ, and "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," a story about a hitchhiking model with unusually large thumbs that was later adapted into a film by Gus Van Sant.\n\nRobbins' contributions to literature extend beyond his novels to include essays, short stories, and a unique "un-memoir" titled "Tibetan Peach Pie." This varied body of work solidified his reputation as a leading American author whose influence spans multiple generations. His books not only achieved commercial success, frequently appearing on The New York Times bestseller list, but also gained cultural resonance. Notably, "Another Roadside Attraction" was found among Elvis Presley's belongings and became a favorite among the Hell's Angels. Robbins' enduring appeal lies in his ability to connect with readers through his imaginative storytelling and thoughtful exploration of complex ideas. His work remains a rich resource for those seeking both humor and depth in literature.

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