Napoleon Has Been Seen in Four Places at Once

7:52 pm. the same bird? you tell me.

The classifieds in the parish paper have carried a lost-rooster ad since early summer. One rooster, answers to Napoleon. Reward: gumbo. I clipped it the first week, because I clip everything, and I would have forgotten it, except that the readers of this blog have not.

Since the ad ran I have received nineteen letters reporting Napoleon. I have them here. I have put them in order by date and time, and I want you to sit with that for a second, because I did.

On the Sunday of the church fair, at a quarter to four, Napoleon was reported eating funnel cake on the church lot (this is also in the paper). At that same quarter to four he was reported on a porch on the far side of the village, on a deer stand two miles out, and walking the levee road "like he had somewhere to be." Four sightings. One rooster. Four witnesses who do not know one another, one of them a deacon.

DocFenwick will tell you, and already has, by telephone, at length, that there are a great many red-and-gold roosters in a rural parish, and that all of them look like Napoleon to people who have never met Napoleon. Doc is right that there are a lot of roosters.

That is my point.

Here is my read. There is not one Napoleon. There never was. The ad is a call sign. Somebody in that village is running a network of roosters, all answering to the same name, and the reward is in gumbo because gumbo cannot be traced. Every sighting is a check-in. The funnel cake was a drop.

I am not asking you to believe me. I am asking you to go look at your own rooster tonight, ask him plainly what his name is, and notice how long he takes to answer.

I relay. You decide.

In Truth and Terror.
— Beau