Mrs. Alfred Packer does Labor Day (final chapter up 08-31)

[delilahmused]

I'm absolutely entranced, frank! Poor hippywife. Wild Bill is such an angry, unattractive cad, no wonder she's so hard up!

It's very hard to come up with a dignified, clean word for penis...maybe something foreign like "shillelagh" or "caduceus", the rod of Hermes. I know nothing about the history of the shillelagh but the caduceus was originally a staff of the messenger god, except there were ribbons instead of snakes. When and how they eventually turned into snakes I don't know. But it's an ancient astrological symbol, and also said to be used by the Gnostics, and Kundalini Yoga practitioners so it would appeal to their admiration of weird spiritual practices. Supposedly, when it's used in Yoga it helps the reptilian part of the brain, which does fit the DUmmies. Except that's kind of problematic because lizards & snakes, in fact, have hemipenes (2 penises...more bang for the buck I guess).

Extremity...is that too racy?

If you were talking about Wild Bill's member I'd suggest cudgel.

Anyway, perhaps these will trigger a word for you.

Cindie

[franksolich]

It's very hard to come up with a dignified, clean word for the male sexual organ.....

.....maybe something foreign like "shillelagh" or "caduceus", the rod of Hermes......

Extremity...is that too racy?

I had the sensitivities of others very much in mind when writing Chapters 4, 7, and 10, and totally avoided any words (excepting the sure-to-be replaced "pendulum") used for sexual organs, male or female.

If I was writing something of a medical nature, I'd have no qualms about using the official names of those things, but "Mrs. Alfred Packer does Labor Day" is no scientific thesis, merely a parody of the primitives stalking franksolich.

When I was a little lad, I used to earn the occasional nickel, dime, or quarter showing others pictures from medical textbooks in my father's library, which kind of, uh, distorted my view of things sexual; God help me, but I've never been able to describe things sexual in anything but dry clinical detached terms.

In real life, when speaking, I don't believe I've ever in my whole life used that "c" word derogatory to women, and I certainly haven't ever written it.  It's such a foul, vile, despicable word to use, even if the woman to whom it might pertain is herself foul, vile, and despicable.

I had trouble enough using "bitch" for the first time ever last December, when writing the award for the top primitive of 2010--something in my life I'd never called a woman, either in speaking or writing.

As for the five letter plural "b" word usually used to designate a woman's upper parts, whenever I see that used, I think to myself, "Come on guys, we're not teenage boys any more."

As for male parts, "pecker" seems little-boyish, "dick" I suppose is okay although I myself think it rather bland; in real life in speaking I prefer "cock," most nearly all the time, if not 100% of the time.

As for the backside, "ass" is a word better used in speaking than in writing, to show contempt.  "Posterior" is too stilted, "buttocks" too clinical.  "Butt" is crude, "buns" is baby-talk.

As one has seen thus far in Chapter 4, and will see in Chapter 7 and Chapter 10, I have handled the matter--I hope, successfully--by not mentioning the names of such things at all, depending upon the imagination of the individual reader to envision them.

The only dirty word in the entire 12-chapter story refers to the sexual act; it's used five times in two paragraphs in Chapter 7, and franksolich is the one who uses the word.

One can see I'm bending over backwards to keep this clean.

[vesta111]

Frank, what the hell is clean, -----I have never heard my Mother use the word, the correct term for penis

All ways referred to as Man Hood.  As for the word Virgina, never did I hear that word used.

Strange but to not use the medical and correct term words for body parts taught kids that there was something wrong, bad or shamefull about them.  

 Sort of off topic but not by much, my 12 year old grandson was watching a Discovery program with his father.    The topic was the rings around Uranus.    The Boy left the room as he said darn this is nasty.

[franksolich]

Saturday afternoon.  The neighbor came over with the portable crane about noon, and he and hippyhubby Wild Bill contemplated the situation of the 1974 Chevrolet Impala, high-centered on a rock, inclined downward from a drop-off, its nose buried in the ground.

The four-year-old son of the neighbor had accompanied his father, but upon seeing Wild Bill and recalling him as the scary man who’d hissed “fundiekid” at him in the grocery store some weeks before, went back to sit in the cab of the pick-up truck, the windows up and the doors locked.

“Are you sure you want to bother?” the neighbor asked Wild Bill; “this is a piece of junk, beyond repair.

“It’s so rusted the minute the crane starts lifting it, it’ll fall apart into pieces.”

hippyhubby insisted the car had sentimental value for him, without explaining the nature of such sentiments.  He wanted the car, to take it back to Oklahoma.

“But it can’t possibly be repaired here,” the neighbor persisted; “there’s no way it can be fixed so it’ll make it back down to Oklahoma.”

“Well then,” Wild Bill declared, “if we can’t fix it so as to drive it back home, we’ll have to carry it back home.  This car means a lot to me.”

hippyhubby had his brother-in-law bring the converted Fed Ex van, now a three-tiered funeral hearse, to the site, and by hand-motions, guided the neighbor, at the crane, as he carefully picked up the carcass so as to set it on top of the van, where it’d be strapped down.  The front axle and the back bumper fell off as the Impala was raised aloft, besides some other odd parts.

Wild Bill collected the stray parts and put them in the back of the van.

When all was said-and-done, the van looked as if it had a giant metallic ice-bag on its head.

hippyhubby grudgingly pulled out his wallet, and began extracting a couple of crisp new $10-bills, but the neighbor waved it away.  “No problem,” he insisted; “you’re guests here, and we want you to have a good time.”

About the same time the neighbor and his lilliputian heir were driving away, the crane hauled on a trailer behind the truck, from the opposite direction, over by the faraway house, came a dark blue 2009 Buick sedan, rolling across the meadows and through the grove of walnut trees.

It was the neighbor’s wife, the dark-red-haired woman with the merry, tinkling laugh.  She got out of the car, walking over to the hippycamp, and from the other side there emerged the two 6-year-old twin girls.  An infant male was left in the baby-carrier in the back seat, sleeping.

“We brought you some pies,” she said; “I’ve been teaching the girls how to make pies, and as we had some time on our hands this morning, we made some pies.  There’s only one of each, but perhaps you might like them.

“I’ll need some help bringing them over here, though,” she said.

Wild Bill rose for the occasion, walking back to the car with her.  They whispered words as they went, and Mrs. Alfred Packer didn’t like that at all.  They were too close to each other for her comfort, and hippyhubby seemed to warm to her too much, he gruffily laughing and she merrily laughing as they exchanged whispered comments.

The two of them brought over eleven pies—an apple pie, a cherry pie, a strawberry pie, a chocolate pie, a cream pie, a pumpkin pie, a blueberry pie, a rhubarb pie, a coconut pie, a molasses pie, and a mince pie.

“We’d actually made twelve pies,” the neighbor’s wife said, "but the last one’s a sour cream-and-blue cheese pie, and that always goes to him,” pointing over at the faraway house.  “It’s his favorite sort of pie, and he’s upset if anybody else but him has it, he wants it all.”

grasswire was envious; such well-made pies.

Although grateful for the victuals, Mrs. Alfred Packer was glad to see the neighbor’s wife leave.

After repasting on the pies, Wild Bill announced that he and hippywife were going to take the hippymobile into the big city, and then along U.S. Highway 20, to see if they could spot franksolich or, at the least the retard who hung around with franksolich, who’d lead them to franksolich.

hippyhubby loaded up the cadaver carvers, the rope, and some of the large Thermos chests into the back of the hippymobile.

Mrs. Alfred Packer hadn’t told Wild Bill that she’d already seen the second one, and that he was probably not far from them right at this moment, as hippyhubby tended to get all upset and bent out of shape whenever she admitted to having looked at other men.

Maybe they'd just run into franksolich himself, she hoped, keeping the other one out of it.

[vesta111]

Kind of a question here is Frank going to turn this into a Bodice Ripper, soft porn or go full out into toe sucking and Frank getting his belly button filled with cream cheese.?

[BattleHymn]

Maybe a two-part word would do the trick.  In the context you are putting it in, it will be rather obvious what you are referring to, but shouldn't come off sounding too crude. 

Maybe something like "sebastianic sword" would do the trick?       

[franksolich]

Kind of a question here is Frank going to turn this into a Bodice Ripper, soft porn or go full out into toe sucking and Frank getting his belly button filled with cream cheese.?

Oh now, vesta, dear, madam, what this is going to turn into was clearly explained from the beginning; a parody of the primitives stalking franksolich, the usual standard customary Mrs. Alfred Packer story.

Even the ending, Chapter 12, was explained, where cadaver-carver-wielding hippyhubby Wild Bill meets franksolich for the first time.

It strongly hints of future meetings, this ".....for the first time" phrase.

It's no "bodice ripper," vesta, dear, madam.

As for all this other nonsense, no; it's been stated, vesta, dear, madam, three times already that there's no unnatural acts in Chapter 7, or anywhere else in the whole story.

And so as to not make the defrocked warped primitive look bad, franksolich is the one ruining his own reputation by uttering the only dirty word in the whole work.

It's a quality of Nobility, I think, the man willing to make himself look bad so the woman doesn't look bad.

You know, vesta, dear, madam, you and I go back a long way, and we're familiar with each other, like an old comfortable pair of shoes.  You know how a franksolich story goes, and perhaps things written by other members might be of more interest, more novelty, to you.

[franksolich]

Maybe a two-part word would do the trick.  In the context you are putting it in, it will be rather obvious what you are referring to, but shouldn't come off sounding too crude. 

Maybe something like "sebastianic sword" would do the trick?       

Nah, I took care of the problem by simply not describing body parts, male or female, at all.

[franksolich]

Saturday evening.  “You know, I wonder how the boss does that,” the bug-eyed property caretaker said to the neighbor as they stood in the garage, and MineralMan was walking around the corner.

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing, or how to do it, but he ends up doing it anyway.

“And it always seems to work out better than it would’ve if he’d known what he was doing in the first place, and doing it the right way.

“I dunno why it works out that way, but it always works out that way.”

The neighbor and the caretaker looked up as MineralMan walked inside the garage.  Because it was still summer, the doors were wide open.  MineralMan was impressed by the interior; it was so large it could accommodate four vehicles, so clean…..and yet so empty, so spacious.

The concrete floor was immaculate, and there were only six large bags of cat-litter stacked against the wall where the inside door led into the house, and then against the wall opposite, a narrow 12’workbench.

“Has anyone ever used this garage?” he asked the neighbor.

Not really, the neighbor said; “even when it’s –20 degrees or there’s four feet of snow on the ground outside, he still parks his car outside, leaving the garage empty.

“He likes the idea of having space, in case he’s going to need to use it.”

“If there’s an extra toothpick in the kitchen, the boss complains he’s getting crowded out,” the bug-eyed one said.  “He likes his space, even if there’s nothing in it.”

MineralMan had walked over to the house, curious as to if he could use the restroom, not being fond of hippyhubby Wild Bill’s latrine down at the hippycamp.  The neighbor indicated yeah, sure, and shrugged at the door.  Then he went back to what he’d been doing, machining an automotive part for the hippymobile, that Wild Bill had asked him to do.

MineralMan came out some minutes later, emitting a whistle.  “Hey man, you’re right.  That kitchen’s got to be four acres big, but what he has in it, would fit in a shoebox.”

Then MineralMan noticed a big orange cat, standing right outside one of the doors to the garage, just standing there without moving, as if standing sentinel.

“Hey, what’s up with the cats here?” he asked; “how come they act like dogs?”

Before anyone could answer his question, a fourth person came inside, in a jolly booming holler, “Hey, are we hearing wedding bells yet?”

It was the overalled 420-pound guy who shoveled grain at the local elevator five and a half days a week.

“I dunno,” said the neighbor; “he still says it’s six of one thing, half a dozen of another thing, precisely evenly weighed, not enough of a difference to tilt one way or the other.”

The neighbor explained one of the complications.  The occupant rented this property; he didn’t own it.  The lease was coming up in September.  The owners had made noises about tearing down the house, which was falling apart anyway, and putting up a couple of summer homes on the property, ideal as it was.

In which case the occupant and the cats would have to move.

At the same time, his partner out in the middle of the Sandhills was trying to persuade him to move there, so as to be closer.  “You know, he doesn’t make a whole lot of money,” the neighbor said, “and if they were closer together, he’d probably make four, five, times the money he does now.

“The other guy’s the ‘big-picture’ man, and he’s the finder-of-the-needle in haystacks; a perfect match, but as long as it always involves that long-distance drive, not much can be done with it.

“He grew up in the heart of the Sandhills, not like the edge of the Sandhills here, and it’s in him, but she doesn’t think moving way out into the Sandhills is a good idea, because nobody lives out there.

“At least here, there’s people; after all, we’re only six miles away.

“And besides, she and the other guy don’t get along.”

“Oh my no,” said the caretaker, who was the shoe-string relative of the owners of this property; a guy who’d been damaged during the war in Vietnam, who was on their payroll as “caretaker” of the property as a demonstration of Christian charity and compassion.  He lived in town, but had seen much while working out here.

“He and she don’t get along at all, and the boss is in the middle of it.”

“Well, dang,” said the hearty big guy; “I was hoping I was already hearing those wedding bells.

“And you know it’d be one barn-burner of a dance they’d put on.”

A few more pleasantries were exchanged among the three, the big guy wanting to confirm if the picnic for Monday afternoon was still on, after which he left, nodding his head in acknowledgement at the bystander MineralMan too.

MineralMan watched him as he walked out into the darkness, at the same time seeing three cats marching by in lock-step, approaching the cat standing sentinel.  They halted in an even line, presenting arms.  A grey-and-white cat solemnly replaced the big orange cat, so as to stand sentinel. 

Now, true, MineralMan was high and might have been seeing things, but it looked very much like the Changing of the Guard.  He turned to the neighbor and the caretaker, asking, “Hey man, what’s up with the cats here?” but they were too busy machining that automobile part to hear him.

[franksolich]

Sunday morning.  After hippywife had confided with the other hippywomen that she’d seen the stranger and described his attributes, warpy decided she too wanted to see.

Mrs. Alfred Packer hadn’t told hippyhubby what she’d seen, for fear he’d get all bent out of shape.

warpy pointed out that in her college psychology textbooks, such blatantly uninhibited behavior was described as a non-verbal means, by those not talented in the verbal means, of showing contempt for someone looking at them.

“I’ll bet I could turn the tables on him,” she said, “embarrassing him, making him shrivel up and want to crawl into a hole.”

“Well,” grasswire pointed out, “he probably just sleeps in the nude, like lots of other people.  From what I’ve heard of him, he’s probably not a naturkind, running around naked all the time.

“The times I saw him, he struck me as the modest, retiring sort, the one who wants to be a wallflower.”

“True, not up here in fundieland,” warpy contributed, “where everybody’s uptight, and bathe with their clothes on—but I need to check this out, to see what it really is.”

“But it’s private property,” grasswire insisted; “it’s his property, and he’s entitled to do whatever he wants, on his property, without being bothered by other people.  He’s been nice enough to let all of us camp here, and I think he should be left alone, no matter how otherwise interesting he might be.”

“Well, I need to check this out,” warpy repeated.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” grasswire reminded her.

“Isn’t this the same thing as stalking?  Isn’t that why we’re here, to get franksolich for stalking?  I don’t think it’s very nice, snooping on innocent people who aren’t franksolich,” she added.

* * * * *

The previous afternoon, warpy had gone over to the house.  Finding no one home, finding no one anywhere around on the property, she checked the front door, finding it unlocked.  She decided to go inside; if anyone came, she’d hear it, and run out the back door.

warpy had no idea what was inside, and what was inside, she could not have possibly guessed without first seeing it.  The house was mostly empty, several rooms bare of any furniture, and the others only sparsely furnished. 

She was struck by the absence of anything audio-visual (other than the speakerless personal computer)—no television, no radio, no video-cassette recorder, no telephone, no stereo high-fidelity systems; no records, no tapes, no music, no movies.

This is odd, warpy thought; unused electrical outlets all over the place.

Even in the very large but mostly-empty kitchen, only the refrigerator needed an outlet.

But that was not the most singular thing about the inside of the house; what really grabbed the attention was that the walls, every wall in every room, were covered with custom-framed copies of medieval and renaissance portraits, some of them very large, others of them miniatures.  There were hundreds of such portraits; they looked to be of kings and queens and dukes and duchesses and other personages of the Holbein-Durer-Brueghal schools.

No still-lives, no panoramic scenes, no abstract art; simply long-ago faces.

warpy sneered with disapproval, however, at seeing traces of Roman Catholicism in the décor; the usual standard framed Sacred Heart of Jesus that had hung in her own childhood home, some medieval religious art, a set of ancient rosary beads laying in a bowl, a crucifix on the wall over the bed, those sorts of things.

Also she noticed dust covered much of everything.  The house was neat and clean, but this guy never cared for dusting.

She checked the medicine cabinet, disappointed to find the only drug was aspirin.  And as for alcohol, there were only several bottles of Preferred Stock cologne and after-shave.

* * * * *

Well, that had been yesterday, and this morning, Sunday morning, warpy decided she’d like to get a look at the guy inside the house, preferably the same sort of look Mrs. Alfred Packer had gotten.

warpy, sneaking up to the house in the early-morning light, first peeked into the window of the bedroom, but no one was there.  She walked around the house, peering inside every window, seeing nothing.

But when she turned the corner to the front porch, she saw him

the rest to be found at http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,63369.0.html

[franksolich]

Sunday afternoon.  hippyhubby was getting hot; he and Mrs. Alfred Packer had spent the previous afternoon and evening motoring around the big city, and then going up and down U.S. Highway 20 stopping at every gasoline station, every convenience store, every restaurant, looking for franksolich.

“You’d think we’d at least find the dumb one, to follow to franksolich—he seemed to be all over the place around here, all the other times we’ve been up here since early spring.

“But no,” Wild Bill groused; “we’re running into all these fundies going home from church and Sunday dinner, seeing everybody who lives in this area, excepting franksolich and his sidekick the moron.”

Mrs. Alfred Packer wanted to tell hippyhubby she’d seen the moron—on the condition he’d leave him alone, and just go after franksolich—to tell him that the moron who could lead them to franksolich was just a football touchdown away from them at the hippycamp—but she hesitated to tell him, because Wild Bill got wild when she talked about other men, and it always took a few days in bed for the bruises to fade.

hippywife sighed.

She’d have to tell him sooner or later, but not right now.

Maybe he’d find out on his own tomorrow, at the picnic.

[JLO]

Sunday morning.
But when she turned the corner to the front porch, she saw him

the rest to be found at http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,63369.0.html

Just as I'm waiting to read further, I get this from the link.

"An Error Has Occurred!
The topic or board you are looking for appears to be either missing or off limits to you. "

Edit for spelling

[franksolich]

Just as I'm waiting to read further, I get this from the link.

"An Error Has Occurred!
The topic or board you are looking for appears to be either missing or off limits to you."

You'll be able to see it after you get some more posts in, sir.

It was deemed "too heavy" for lurking primitives and our pal Vinnie here.

Anyway, the Reader's Digest condensed version of it is that the defrocked warped primitive seduces franksolich without knowing he's franksolich, and the usual unexpected ending.

Again, let the defrocked warped primitive be an example to all the other primitives; if franksolich extends the hand of friendship to one of them, it's a good idea to take it, because franksolich doesn't lampoon, mock, or ridicule primitives who accept his always-sincere compassion.  franksolich is a nice guy, but to scorn him means he's going to write about them.

[franksolich]

Sunday evening.  Wild Bill was about as happy as an old lady with haemerrhoids as he pulled the hippymobile up to a grocery store in the big city.  He and hippywife had spent several more hours scouting the terrain, hunting for either franksolich or the moron who was usually with him, but with no luck.

There hadn’t been any point in sending out others from the hippycamp to look, because none of them had ever seen either of the two, and wouldn’t know what they were looking for anyway.

And there weren’t going to be any more chances until Thanksgiving weekend, and even that was up in the air.  To get Thanksgiving off from the nursing home, Mrs. Alfred Packer was going to have to behave herself, restrain her pecuniary urges, desisting from selling her home-made earrings to vulnerable and possibly incompetent buyers wishing to please her.

And hippyhubby wasn’t too sure she’d behave, as she was a woman too hungry for money.

But as Wild Bill turned off the ignition, he got an idea.

There wouldn’t be any point of him coming up here alone on Thanksgiving; he had to have help finding franksolich and then after that, with the miscellaneous abattoirery tasks on the carcass, much as he had to use his brothers to help him in other steak-gathering expeditions.

It had to be someone who knew franksolich.

Wild Bill ruminated.

Who knew franksolich?  Who knew franksolich really well?  Who knew franksolich really well, and had good reasons for wishing him to be hamburger? 

Who, who knew franksolich really well, would be most willing to help hippyhubby eliminate franksolich, wipe him off the face of the earth, for all the trouble he’d caused on Skins’s island?

Mrs. Alfred Packer was reading his thoughts.

“Atman,” she said.

Wild Bill got angry; of course, Atman was the perfect partner for such an enterprise, being intimately acquainted with franksolich—the ideal candidate, the most possibly perfect candidate—but he was put out because hippywife’d thought of Atman before he himself did.

To salve his dignity, hippyhubby pointed out that Atman was just a dumb soft rich kid, a boy in girl’s panties, a wimp, a spoiled brat, a crybaby, a sissy, a mama’s boy with a weird thing about women’s used personal sanitary products, a surfing bum, a fraidy-cat, a self-righteous prig, an insufferable bore, an aristocratic snob who looked down upon the hoi polloi, a Brahman who wouldn’t put up with even the mere shadow of a commoner touching him, a trimethylaminuriac pseudo-“intellectual.”

But really, hippyhubby thought nobody’d be better than Atman, fish-odored ***** as he was.

Wild Bill could put up with that, just so he got franksolich.

The hippycouple walked into the grocery store.  Mrs. Alfred Packer went to look at the Tupperware section, as Wild Bill went to the meat-counter, where he encountered the neighbor’s wife, without her husband or the three older fundiebrats, just the infant boy.

Seeing Wild Bill, the neighbor’s wife brightened up, and laughed, stroking his chin.

“Surely you’re coming to the picnic tomorrow,” she said; “You’ve been camping so close, it’s convenient to you, and you’re leaving later in the evening to go back home, and it’d be nice for you to enjoy dinner without having to worry about cleaning up before you go.

“There’ll be a lot of interesting people there, and he’s such a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet.”

[franksolich]

Monday morning, Labor Day.  “Well, I told you,” grasswire reminded warpy, “curiosity killed the cat. 

“One shouldn’t pry, because one’s sure to run into things one shouldn’t see.

“I still don’t think it’s very nice; it’s the same thing as stalking, and we’re up here to get franksolich, not to snoop on other people.”

Ms. Ed, the unappellated eohippus, decided she too should look into the matter.

“After all,” Ms. Ed pointed out, “I’m the one who’s handled 10,000 of these things, and I’d know better than anybody else, whether it’s any good or not.  Give me a look, and I’ll tell you how good it is.”

Mrs. Alfred Packer remembered something.  “Try to catch him when he’s stretching.”

“But even if you don’t, it’s still worth the looking,” warpy morosely said; “you’ll want to grab and not let go.  You’ll want to play with it all day long.”

Ms. Ed asked,  “Well, would either of you hop around in the sack with him?”

warpy sighed.  “Well, he needs to work on his ‘letting her down easy’ technique.”

“In a Sooner minute, I would,” said hippywife.  “You see, all Wild Bill does is poke a couple of times, and then turns over and goes to sleep.  And while he’s sleeping, he belches and passes gas all night long.

“This one, I think, could keep a gal going like the Eveready bunny.”

“How experienced do you suppose he is?“ Ms. Ed asked. “I’ll bet he’s one of these namby-pamby good Catholic boys--you know the type, they’re fussy and fastidious and don’t want to get dirty, and they insist on doing it only one way.”

“I thought that before I met him,” warpy said; “and for a man, he’s clean and nice-smelling when not smoking those damned cigarettes, but he’s not the domineering type, the Catholic husband or boyfriend type.

“In fact, he’s rather submissive; anybody who wants their way with him, gets their way with him.”

hippywife agreed with warpy, “I think so too.  He’s not very bright, and there’s something else the matter with him--I’ll bet he’s been used a lot, seen it all, done it all.

“He’s the male version of the dumb blonde bimbo; no smarts and that body, it’s a dangerous combination for him.

“He’s been around the block more than once.”

Mrs. Alfred Packer shuddered at the thought of the gold-digger, that wanton hussy, strolling around the block with him.

So on Monday morning, very early in the morning, Ms. Ed sneaked up to the window of the bedroom.

Her sense of timing was perfect; he was starting to wake up.  Rubbing his eyes, he sat up to look at the clock.  He sat on the side of the bed, his arms crossed hanging in front of him. 

And then he got up, walking over to the bureau, to look at his face, neck, and shoulders in the mirror, his back turned to her.

Ms. Ed really liked the back view—there were no creases, no sagging, back there--but of course she was waiting for the frontal details.  “Come on, come on, quit wasting time, show it,” she said almost out loud.

Then suddenly the neighbor stuck his head inside the door to the bedroom.

Apparently the neighbor had driven up the front while Ms. Ed was huddled underneath the window in the back, and wanted to let the other one know he was there.

The other one standing in front of the mirror said something to the neighbor, who was by then inside the bedroom.  Because of the air-conditioning in the room, the windows were shut, and so Ms. Ed couldn’t hear what they were saying.  The neighbor stood in profile while the other one frustratingly kept his back to Ms. Ed.

They talked for a minute or two, laughing, and then the neighbor walked back into the living room.

Then Ms. Ed watched in dismay as he grabbed a pair of gym shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt, making himself decent, his back always to her, after which he walked out to the living room.

[franksolich]

Monday afternoon.  It looked to be about sixty, seventy, people at the picnic, hippywife guessed; a fine assortment of folks.  It was just too bad hippyhubby stubbornly refused to come.

And warpy too.

The neighbor’s wife was down at the hippycamp, trying to persuade a grouchy Wild Bill and an uninterested warpy into joining the fun—Mrs. Alfred Packer didn’t like that; the neighbor’s wife sitting up tight with Wild Bill at a table, stroking his chin, patting his pony-tail, and chortling with that tinkling laugh of hers, “Oh, you funny man,” as hippyhubby appreciatively warmed to her as he sharpened his set of cadaver-carvers.

But her curiosity about this was stronger than her fears about that.

She was puzzled as to why the host wasn’t there, but it was early yet.

While the food was being set up, a Lutheran pastor in vestments gave a short welcome to the crowd.

Then a Roman Catholic priest got up and delivered a quick two-minute homily to the receptive crowd, reciting from Isaiah 40: 4-5, which he mentioned as being their then-absent host’s favorite quote from the Holy Scriptures, the “…..every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill laid low, the crooked straight and the rough places plain, and the Glory of the Lord shall be revealed…..” part. 

And finally, an Episcopalian minister, also somewhat dressed up in the manner of the Old Anglicans, pronounced Grace.

It was all very ecumenical, so all-inclusive, Mrs. Alfred Packer thought, but she was glad Wild Bill wasn’t here to see it, as he’d go into one of his fundie-hating rants.

However, she did wonder why religion was being evoked on a secular holiday.

“Oh, that’s just the way he is,” the neighbor said to hippywife; “he thinks it’s always important to acknowledge God.  Others might not feel as strongly as he does about it, but as invoking God doesn’t harm anything, even those who don’t care, don’t care, and those who care think it’s a nice little touch.”

>>>>>

“He did that when in college too,” the blonde woman told grasswire as they ate at a table; ”not being at his own parties. He lived with five other guys, and then only one, and they were always throwing parties, sometimes three times a week.  They had what was a campus ‘party house’ at the time.

“Since he was the youngest, and the others too busy, he was the one in charge of setting things up, cleaning and stocking and all that.  Then at the beginning of the party, he’d be at the door, greeting guests as they came in, welcoming them, asking them to sign the guest-book, and then telling them where the kitchen was, where the beer was, where the bathrooms were, reminding them, ‘if it looks like an ashtray, it is.’

“At the beginning of the party, when he was still there, he had a standing offer of $100 to any of the first-arriving guests who could correctly identify all the portraits on the walls in the living rooms and hallways.  He never had to pay, though, as there were more than 200 of them, and nobody could ever do better than 50 or 60, even people who were as much into English history as he was.

“Then, after the party got going, and his roommates were around to handle the social chores, he simply evaporated, going away.  He just slipped out, too quickly and too quietly to be seen going away.

“His roommates were pretty responsible; in four years, the neighbors never complained, the cops never came—even though at times more than a hundred people’d be there.

“It was a pretty big house, three stories.

“The next morning, sitting at the table in the kitchen, the guest-book in hand, he’d inquire of the roommates what this guest had said, and what this other guest had done, and how this guest got along with this other guest, on down the line.  Whether this guest had been drunker than he usually got, or that guest had been louder than she usually was, those sorts of things.

“The only variation was in early April or late November, when instead of using the guest-book, he had people signing a birthday or Christmas card to the Queen, and he went from that, when asking how his party’d gone.

“He had a popular reputation as a great host, a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one could ever hope to meet.

“And he always got a ‘thank you’ letter from the Queen.”

>>>>>

“Oh, but you see, I lived here with him—or practically—three summers ago,” the eyeglassesed brunette told Mrs. Alfred Packer and Ms. Ed, “when I was working on a soil project; I didn’t really ‘live’ here, but I spent lots of nights here, and of course I was spending most of the days around him.

“I got the impression at times he’d be happier without my company, but he put up with it.

“If I was spending the night, he’d use the couch in the living room, and I’d use his bedroom.  There’s three other bedrooms here, but they were hot and stuffy, and not furnished.  So he’d sleep on the couch.

“He was the perfect gentleman, modest and decorous, never even uttering a curse word or appearing unshaven.  His only failing was that, on really hot days, he’d wear only gym shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt, which I thought too skimpy sometimes, especially whenever one of my professors came up here.

“It just didn’t seem like him, to be that way, to be so casual and unembarrassed in front of other people, particularly people he didn’t know, or in front of women.”

>>>>>

“The deal about the cats,” the bug-eyed caretaker illuminated MineralMan. “is that he’s a dog person, prefers dogs.  He doesn’t know how to deal with cats.

“But when he first came here, there were a few wild cats hanging around.  With his idea that one’s compelled to accept all coming one’s way, he got them all shot and neutralized, so they wouldn’t get sick and so they wouldn’t produce more cats.

“Not being a cat person, he didn’t know how to handle cats.  Being a dog person, he knew how to handle dogs.  So he treated the cats as if they were dogs, taught them all the usual dog tricks, trained them as dogs, and it worked out well.

“The cats here are great watch-dogs, none better.

“Actually, the sheriff thinks he needs to have a couple of dogs, given that cats aren’t very big, and he lives alone out here far from anybody else.  One can’t tell if someone’s coming here with malicious motives, and dogs are good protection. 

“There’s plenty of people who want to do him damage because he’s a nice guy, and they don’t like nice guys; the state patrol around here has an indefinite ‘watch’ on all motor vehicles coming into this area bearing Maryland license-plates and Italian-looking people riding in them.

“And some really fat near-sighted guy from Elgin, Illinois.

“He agrees that dogs would be better, but he’s waiting until the cats thin out—from natural old age, of course—before he gets a couple of dogs, as he doesn’t like mixing dogs and cats.  When he gets down to three cats, he’ll go to the local veterinary and pick up two mongrels there to be given away, and train them to ‘hear’ for him.”

>>>>>

The octagenarian ancient elderly gentleman who used to mow the meadow, the current owner of the property, was sitting at a table with his equally-ancient wife, across from hippyhubby Wild Bill’s brother with both eyes on the same side of his nose.

Seeing the sight, and wishing to make their guest comfortable, the ancient gentleman said to Wild Bill’s brother, “You know, this was back in the ‘30s, but I went to school with a kid who had three nostrils, and another who had a toe growing out of his elbow.

“Nice kids, but I don’t remember what happened to them.”

>>>>>

Seeing a cloud of dust and the roar of an engine, the crowd gathered at the tables looked over to the north, at the dirt road leading to this property.  There was of course the hill first, which led down into this shallow basin.  When it reached the top of the hill, one could see it was an open-air jeep, with but only one person.

As he pulled down into the yard, one could see the host of the festivities had finally arrived.

Leaping out from the seat, dressed in gym shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt, he waved and shyly smiled at the crowd assembled, and then walked over to the wanton hussy, the gold-digger, kissing her on the cheek and giving her the keys.

The crowd clapped and cheered, and demanded more.

He gently took her by the waist, tilting her, and the two of them got involved in a long, passionate kiss.

hippywife wished hippyhubby could kiss like that.

Then the pair started kicking, leaping, twirling, spinning, into various forms of vesnianky, as if dancing across the steppes for an appreciative audience.  She was dressed in a knee-length cotton skirt and a white blouse, no jewelry or make-up, and he was dressed the way he was, but it didn’t take hardly any imagination to see them in Ukrainian peasant garb, with kobzas, banduras, hurdy-gurdys, volins, bubens, reshetos, and drymbas strumming from the background.

To the stoned MineralMan it seemed they didn’t need costumes, scenery, or music anyway; the way they danced together, the way they were, radiated all that by itself.

Mrs. Alfred Packer again noticed that most peculiar phenomenon, that she’d seen at the dance on the 4th of July, when the two of them had managed to transform a Sandhills square-dance into an Elizabethan Hampton Court.  She was hearing the music, and timing her steps to it; it was as if he wasn’t hearing the music at all, and timing his steps by closely watching her.  Being the man, he was the lead, but if one watched closely, he was following her.

hippywife wondered why that was.

>>>>>

On the other side of the grounds, the neighbor commented to Wild Bill’s sister, “Notice how well they work together, in fast-paced unbroken unity, as if they’d been made for each other.

“But he has to follow her, because he can’t hear the music.”

Wild Bill’s sister, forgetting to attach any significance to that, commented that yes, indeed, they made a fine, compatible, pair.  “I wish my hubby and I were like that.”

“You see,” the neighbor went on, “they met only three years ago.  He was attracted to her because she was so expressive, so talkative, in body-language, and he could understand her with no problem at all.

“He gravitates towards people he can read, understand.

“And she, being a dance-and-theatre-arts instructor, ‘expression’ is part of her job.

“Somewhere along the line, she convinced him that he wasn’t being quite fair; on one hand, he expected that others express themselves in ways that he could read them, but at the same time he thought it okay for him to be a cold fish, inert and motionless, keeping himself difficult to understand.

“He speaks, in fact he speaks better than many hearing people, each word distinct and crystal-clear, but really flat and slow and broad, making people think he’s not very bright.

“So he got interested in this dance-and-theatre stuff; not for ‘culture,’ but simply because he thought it would teach him to be more expressive, deflecting away from the tone of his voice.

“He wears three-piece suits during business meetings for the same reason; the trim sharp attire deflects attention form his voice.

“But the wife thinks he may’ve gone too far in this dance-and-theatre stuff; every time he comes into our kitchen, it’s as if he’s about to break into some sort of soliloquy from Richard III or Hamlet, expressing himself.”

>>>>>

After the show, their host, flanked by the neighbor on one side and the tall eyeglassesed brunette on the other, walked over to the grill to make a hamburger for himself.  As the three of them stood there talking, he heaped sour cream on a whole-wheat bun.  While cooking the hamburger, he pressed it down hard on the grill, so as to squeeze out every drop of grease.

MineralMan, stoned but still capable of crude coherent observation, and hippywife at the same time thought the phenomenon peculiar, the way he did that, gluing himself to one person or another while in the presence of a third person, the second and third persons doing all the talking-and-listening while he just stood there, even if they were talking to, or about, him.

MineralMan knew he was deaf, information thus far unknown to Mrs. Alfred Packer.

hippywife suddenly remembered something else, having seen the sight many times before, but with a different person.

They had been all over the area all weekend, and some of them of course had seen this person, the close friend of franksolich.

But no one had seen the smart articulate one, the blond cowboy, franksolich himself.

[vesta111]

Dear Frank,

I had the most fortunate meeting with a Navy Doctor that treated the service men for sexual problems.

We ate and drank more then a few cocktales and MY lesson in pornography began.  Why is pure pornography more powerful then the see all films and pictures that lay it all out on the line????

He believed it all stems from the mind of men and their imaginations.  Imagination is more powerfull then fact, as he told me.    As an example he gave me the nudest camps where few people are raped, there is nothing to imagine.     Now woman wearing bathing suits, the thong or tiny bikini top will stir up the imagination of any red hot blooded male.  They challenge a mans self control, his mind and if a man gets too excited, then she the half naked woman cry RAPE.

The very reason  the writers of historical romance fiction out sells the books , the steamy sex scenes that are full of garbage, nothing left to the imagination is, because they use the Hollywood practice of the 40-50 era of the fade to a burning fire place and let the reader or watcher take over in their minds of what happens next.

The reason I mentioned, Frank, coming up with an attack of a female with 6oz. of Philadelphia Creme Cheese was just a thought of how we the readers would, if you stopped that chapter at that point, we would go nuts wanting to know why, where ,what, and who, would be the result-----GOOD old fashion Cliff Hanger.

To leave at that point and when we demand to know what he happend,  a nice smile and gentleman never tell would leave us 

In no way do I want you to get down and dirty with me or others.  Sir. I think you miss judged me, reading is one of a kind entertainment for pleasure readers.   Movies with all the heavy breathing and body parts turn me off, as do any book with a blow by blow detail.    Heck I hate the slasher movies, but will read a book on the same idea.

I am sorry if I upset you Frank by asking where all the porn was, We still do not know each other well enough to come to a meeting of the minds.

I do get all bent out of shape when you end a chapter, you see I am reading this and have placed the charactors into MY view point, not some one other deciding how they look as in a movie.   You have placed dozens of people and their lives in my mind, you describe them, my imagination fills in the blanks.

Some of your charactors I for some reason like, even if you make them out to be horrid or misguided folks, these are your creation and you have the power to turn them into Angles or Devils.

Personally that relative with the eyes on the same side of his nose, you have made me to become fond of the poor man.      Up to You Frank, will this man become a Monster or a Hero ???

Hot dog, I finally found me a writer that captures my imagintion, so that at the darndest times, washing the floor my mind heads back to FRANKS people.

[franksolich]

I am sorry if I upset you Frank by asking where all the porn was, We still do not know each other well enough to come to a meeting of the minds.

Oh now, vesta, dear, madam, you did too read the pornography, that link that the lurking primitives and our pal Vinnie here can't get into, even though they've been frustratingly banging on the door to get it, to see what happens when the defrocked warped primitive seduces franksolich.

When I wrote that, I figured it would be read, but wouldn't garner any comments, because no one would want to publicly admit they've read pornography.

Some days after posting that, my reaction is, "Well, I really wish I had written that; after all, I'm a good Catholic boy and I'm sure it's ruined my reputation among decent and civilized people."

But at the same time there's a parallel reaction; "Well, whatever--what's written is written, and can't be unwritten.  And besides, I got my digs in at the defrocked warped primitive, who spurned the hand of friendship offered her--a hand of compassion, of pity, of understanding, who was willing to be her best friend, to console her in her misery, her wretchedness, her loneliness."

[franksolich]

Monday evening.  Wild Bill and warpy had remained at the hippycamp while everyone else was up at the house enjoying the picnic.  hippyhubby was fretting and stewing that they’d been up here the whole holiday weekend, and for the first time, had not seen either franksolich or his cohort, the retard.

warpy finally admitted to hippyhubby that hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer had confirmed that the inhabitant of the house was one of the two he was looking for; she of course had never seen him before, but hippywife had.  Wild Bill quit packing up his set of cadaver carvers, slamming one of them down on the table.

But he’d deal with hippywife later, back home, in a way she wouldn’t forget, for not telling him.

As darkness descended and the faraway picnic was breaking up, the rest of the hippyparty returned to the hippycamp, so as to take everything down and pack it away, hitting the road for home, northeastern Oklahoma.

“Okay,” hippyhubby Wild Bill announced, “here’s the deal.  I’m going to deal with the retard myself, I don’t need anybody’s help.  I’ll get him to reveal where franksolich is; we still got an hour or so, before having to take off.  If franksolich is close enough, we’ll get him yet tonight.

“The retard’s going to take us right to franksolich, and if the retard causes any problems, well, we’ll be taking back two sets, not one, of Nebraska corn-fed steaks.  We don’t want the retard, but we’ll take him if we have to.”

Some of the others insisted they should probably go along with Wild Bill, in case he needed help.

“The retard’s a retard.  A perfect set-up; I could do this with one hand tied behind my back, without any help from anybody else.”

hippyhubby looked over the assortment of weapons and equipment, and chose to take the 24” cadaver carver and 50’ of rope.

As Wild Bill slinked through the darkness to the house, he noticed the host was still with three of the guests, the tall eyeglassesed woman, the neighbor, and the bug-eyed caretaker, talking with them out in the yard.  Damn, he thought, too many.

They were picking up litter left over from the picnic.  Once done, the host and the woman stood inside the lighted garage, hippyhubby peering through a window.  He and she had a conversation, after which she walked to her car, and left.

The neighbor and the bug-eyed one brought a plastic garbage-bag filled with litter into the garage, after which they stood around for a while, chitchatting.  The host finally indicated he was tired, and so the other two said their “good-byes” and walked down to their own motor vehicles.

The retard stood inside the garage for some minutes, looking out into the darkness, and then shut off the light, going inside the house.

The host shut off the light on the porch, and then went to the computer inside.  Wild Bill watched him through one of the dining-room windows.  He checked the Drudge Report, and then logged off.  He went in to the kitchen and dumped some cat-food into a bowl on the floor, and changed the water in the other bowl.

Then he went into the bedroom and got undressed for bed.

Well, hippyhubby thought to himself; stupid and now without a stitch.

How much more vulnerable could one possibly be?

And if the retard needed taken down, they’d be spared the trouble of skinning him.

Wild Bill waited a while, and then circled the house, to the front.  He tripped a couple of times in the darkness, but there was no indication he’d been heard..  He went in the front door, and in the darkness there groped his way towards the bedroom, whose light was already out.

He tripped a couple of times, making noise, but oddly, not a stir from the bedroom.

Opening the door to the bedroom, he fingered for the light-switch, and at the same time he flicked it on, he bent into a crouching position, the cadaver carver in both hands, letting out a sudden screech as if a Samurai warrior.

“EEEE-OW!”

Startled by the sudden flash of light—of course, he couldn’t hear the scream—the occupant of the bed jerked up, tossing aside the covering sheet, banging his back against the wall.

He stared at the crouched Wild Bill, agony writ all over his face.  When bending down, hippyhubby had thrown his back out of joint again, and was suffering.

The occupant stood over him, hands on hips, looking at him blankly.

Finally, he understood.  His unexpected guest was writhing in pain.

Noticing the rope and cadaver carver, the host picked them up and walked to the front door, where he tossed them out onto the front yard.  Then he returned to the bedroom, where hippyhubby was still twisting on the floor, in unspeakable pain and agony.

He let Wild Bill twitch and convulse for a while, until the muscles and nerves had settled down, and then helped him to his feet, walking him out to the living room, hoping to get him out the door and out of his life.  Propping himself up, his arms and hands staked on the dining room table, hippyhubby was still in pain, red-faced, and sweating.

But he had to get franksolich, and this retard could lead him to franksolich.

But how does one grapple with a naked man, to get him to talk?

hippyhubby, in between bursts of pain, decided to use diplomacy, “explaining things.”

He said he was looking for this guy’s friend.

The other guy stared at him blankly, not understanding.

He repeated, he was looking for his friend.

The other one stared at him blankly.

Wild Bill was starting to get hostile, but at the same moment the retard realized something, and without saying anything, casually brushed the hair on the side of his head away, revealing an absence of an ear.  Then he did it to the other side; no ear there either.

hippyhubby gaped in astonishment, not so much at the absence of ears, but at the sheer insolent contempt with which his host bared himself; it was a cold malignant hate-filled stare, that look. 

Fearful, Will Bill tried by gesticulations and ostentatiously mouthing words, to learn the whereabouts of the friend.  He didn’t mouth “franksolich,” though; he simply said repeatedly, “your friend, the cowboy, that one guy you’re always with.”

The occupant lifted an index finger, signaling that he understood; hippyhubby was looking for a friend of his.  But which friend?  “Friend,” “cowboy,” “the one guy” he was always with, weren’t descriptive enough; he had lots of friends who fitted those words.

He went over to the buffet in the dining room, and pulled out a small photograph album.  He flipped through the pages, most of the pictures having to do with the exploration of the William Rivers Pitt some summers previously, but there were a few others, too, other people, other places, other times.

In those photographs that had them, he pointed out each male subject, at which Wild Bill shook his head; not the one he was looking for.  But then on the third-from-the-last page, there was a photograph taken in North Dakota the autumn of 2009, of two guys, the one standing in front of hippyhubby, and the other one a blond cowboy.

Wild Bill jabbed his finger at the cowboy; that was who he was looking for.

That was him.  Where was he, hippyhubby demanded to know.

“But he’s not around,” Wild Bill was told; “this weekend, he’s down somewhere in northeastern Oklahoma, around Tulsa, looking at some horses.”

the end