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By Root 414 0

He set it up beneath the sign, and I held the legs while he climbed up. Keep it steady, I thought, wouldn’t want to have this crucial encounter end in a sprained ankle. As I stared up at a rear end in board shorts, I realized the greater import behind my ostensibly simple duty. To come to this juncture, to hold that ladder, was why I had dreamed up the Typo Eradication Advancement League in the first place—so that I could aid in endeavors such as these, pointing the way for the managers of the nation to correct problems in their own territories. With my hands firmly grasping the ladder of attentiveness and care, who knew how high my countrymen could ascend? Perhaps to the very heavens of perfect spelling and grammar, where seraphim cry hosannas to the correctly deployed apostrophe and cherubim strike down subject-verb disagreements with their burning blades!

Above me, the manager popped at out, then moved the rest of the letters closer together. “There, do you feel better?”

“Sure do,” I said, taking the question at face value. “I can count this as a success story.”

“Just don’t include me in the picture, eh?”

I stood marveling at the small but visible improvement in the world that my ladder-holding had brought about. I won’t say that it was a rush, because we’re not talking about Xtreme snowboarding here, just a small and early step on the brambled road to righteousness. But I did feel a palpable lifting of the spirit, a realization that the landscape around me was more malleable than it seemed. All I had to do was ask. Though, as this episode had demonstrated, sometimes asking more than once would be necessary. Persistence was my most potent weapon against the black hordes of error. For the first time in my life I could see the panoply of possibilities opened up by merely engaging people. Imagine what else could be accomplished!

I returned to the campsite to share the happy news with my TEAL colleague. My tale of success lent him needed vitality. He struggled into a sitting position. “Let’s go for a walk,” he wheezed.

“Are you … sure that’s a good idea?”

Benjamin grinned bravely. “Here’s the thing, Deck. I need to puke, but I can’t physically get it out. So let’s walk, and that’ll agitate my insides, and eventually—”

“Okay, I get it,” I said. “You need a hand up?”

He waved his hand dismissively and heaved himself upward on shaking arms. He took a couple of tottering steps over to Callie and grabbed a water bottle from the backseat. Then we made our ponderous way out of the KOA camp and into the commercial district. Benjamin still grimaced like a hurting cowboy, but he persevered, taking liberal swigs from his water, which, he explained, was another facet of his vomit-inducing strategy.

We walked between two giant hotels and onto the cool sand of the beach. The sun sank into a brilliant slumber over the ocean. Mere days ago we’d hung our heads on another beach, one state north, but our mission itself had made progress far beyond geographic measure. I knew now that I could muster the courage to handle whatever orthographic challenge came my way. Perhaps all our recent tribulations had served to lead us to this consecrated moment. I turned to comment on the splendor of the sunset, and saw Benjamin jumping up and down on the sand. Between jumps, he gulped down more water. Something would shift in his internal tracts soon enough. The League, purged of its ill humours, could then commence its true work.

TYPO TRIP TALLY

Total found: 25

Total corrected: 14

6 | Beneath the Surface

March 15–16, 2008 (Atlanta, GA)

Wherein our oblivious yet infinitely amiable Heroes invite contests for which they are ill-equipped, and an unforeseen conversation riddled with deep and ominous subtext precedes a mental maelstrom & literal hailstorm. Soaked through with insight and precipitation, our Chief Arbiter of Grammatical Justice recognizes that, like sewer-dwelling, nunchaku-wielding amphibians, more lurks ’neath the roads our Heroes tread.

In 1861, Georgia and six other slaveholding states seceded from the Union, protesting