Read Online B Is for Beer by Tom Robbins - Free Book Online Page A

Vinegar eels would be having a field day.
    The Beer Fairy, too, was observing this activity, and eventually, as if she felt she ought to get on with her teaching, she said,
    “Beer is rooted in the Four Elements. Do you know the Four Elements? They are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Together they form the basis of what some like to call the real world.
    “Barley and wheat spring from the Earth, of course. The grain is heated to make malt and the malted mash is cooked: that ’s where Fire comes in. As for Water, that ’s a no-brainer, since beer is essentially enhanced Water.”
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    The sprite paused, prompting Gracie to ask, “What about the Air elephant?” It was amazing how attentive she ’d become.
    “Why, the Air is in the bubbles. In the carbonation. You’ll learn at school that the Air you inhale is oxygen and the Air you breathe out is carbon dioxide. It ’s carbon dioxide bubbles—
    carbonated Air—that causes beer to sparkle, to tease the inside of one ’s cheeks with delicious prickles, and, yes, to make one belch. A degree of carbonation occurs naturally while beer is fermenting, but some brewers will later add carbon dioxide to the conditioning tanks to produce a more bubbly brew.”
    Gee, I thought we were done with the brewery lessons, thought Gracie. She struggled in vain to hold back a yawn.
    “Something you’ll never learn in school or in a brewery,” the Beer Fairy went on, poking Gracie between the eyes with her wand, “is that there ’s also a Fifth Element. That ’s right, another basic component of reality, one that ’s as nourishing as Earth, as shifty as Water, as invisible as Air, and as dangerous as Fire.”
    There ’s nothing like the word dangerous to generate interest: it ’s irresistible to young males, scary to most young females, though not necessarily those of the Gracie Perkel variety.
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    “What is it?” she asked.
    The fairy hesitated. A breeze rustled her papery wings. “It ’s not easy to say.” She paused again. “I’m only labeling it an
    ‘element,’ understand, because it doesn’t fall into the category of animal or vegetable or mineral. It disobeys the laws of physics and it moons the rules of logic, just as the two of us have been doing today, actually, although you seem to have taken it completely in stride. What is it? Some people call it transcendence , some used to call it magic … before that word got used up.
    “It ’s a mixture of pure love, unlimited freedom, and total, spontaneous, instantaneous knowledge of everything past, present, and future—all rolled up in a kind of invisible ghost-sheet enchilada that can be periodically smelled and occasionally tasted, but rarely chewed and never, never digested. Hey, you don’t need to make a face. I told you it wouldn’t be easy.
    “There are those who regard it as a blast of divine energy, originating in Heaven, maybe, or in Another World. There ’re also people who are content to refer to it simply as the Mystery , and that ’s as good a term as any, I guess, although I’m rather fond of the jazz musician who, in a different context, once called it hi de ho .”
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    Gracie issued half a giggle. The top half. She wasn’t sure why.
    “Hi de ho,” she said. And then she said it again.
    “People are attracted to the Mystery,” said the fairy, only to immediately correct herself. “No, not simply attracted, they are unconsciously pulled toward it, they hunger for it, they yearn to connect with it, to get next to it, even to merge with it.”
    “They do?”
    “They do and always have, although as I said, this longing is deep inside and mostly unconscious.”
    “But what is it?”
    “If we could say what it is, it wouldn’t be the Mystery, would it? When you stare out of your window into the drizzle and the mist, don’t you sometimes feel that there ’s something more to life than what television and the mall and kindergarten