“Remember that old horror movie from the mid-1970s,†I reminded him. “The one where the eyeballs in the girl went up inside her head, her head twisted completely around, she vomited shit, and was suspended standing in mid-air, emitting all sorts of foul odors and curses—well, that’s how the Die alte Sau would react, upon hearing these words.
“I don’t think you could do anything to protect me, but God could.â€
Then we returned to grouchy old Don. “He’s in his late 50s, retired from the assembly-line, a Chicago ‘tough’ who grew up knocking heads and breaking legs, and then advanced into union violence; he’s probably in reasonably good shape, built like a boxer maybe.
“But he hasn’t indicated any animus towards franksolich, so he’s probably cool, copacetic.â€
The visitor pointed to the name of the mountain man primitive, the number ten top primitive of 2011.
“Oh, him,†I said; “he’s 65, 66, years old and recently had a chunk of his brain removed. The sour-assed choleric type, always writing crank letters-to-the-editor.
“And number nine, well, she’s as formidable as a battleship, a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Ma Kettle, but she’s a woman in great pain, so no danger there.â€
The next one was already on that old list, the list from 2005. “Well, she’s aged decades the past seven years, and is senile now, utterly ga-ga, goofus, out of it, from overuse of mind-altering pharmaceuticals. Her brain-cells are petrified and fossilized.
“She wouldn’t be a problem herself, but since her two sons—half Latino, from their father’s side, not hers—were recently let out of the Big House in California—drug offenses—it might be a good idea to keep her on the list.â€
To number seven: “God forgive me for saying this, but white trash.â€
To number six: “God forgive me for saying this, but white trash.â€
And then we discussed the next one. “You know, I saw a photograph of him for the first time yesterday,†I aaid; “he’s more frail and feeble than I’d pictured him.
“However, he is a caporegime for the d’Alessandro crime family of Baltimore and San Francisco, and could probably call upon his subordinates Louie “the Persuader,†Alphonse “the Dentist,†Manny “the Orthopaedic Surgeon,†and Joey “the Undertaker,†to deal with things.
“I’d keep on the ‘watch list’ any automobile bearing Maryland license plates with Italian-looking guys inside it, to check to see if they have baseball bats in the trunk.
“Now this one,†I continued, “is a guy from New Jersey, his brain fried some decades ago from psychedelic drugs, and parts of it removed; in his late fifties, short, squat, and heavy.
“However, he’s obsessed with routine; doesn’t like change, even in the slightest way. If he had to eat Rice Chex rather than Corn Chex for breakfast, it’d ruin his whole life. He’s in no mental condition to come after franksolich.â€
The third one was of concern because of his geographic proximity to franksolich, circa 200 miles.
“Oh, but two things,†I said; “the first is that it’d cost him about sixty bucks for gasoline, round trip, to come up here and do harm, and he’s not the sort to pay his own way. If somebody else paid for the gasoline, he’d do it, but if he has to pay, he won’t. It’s pretty safe to speculate nobody else is willing to pay.
“The other thing is, I know what he looks like in real life now—not by plan or design but only by random chance—and would know to stay at least eight feet away from him, lest he slip on the floor, coming down on top of me. In which case the rescue squad would have to pick me up with a spatula, and deliver me to the mortuary on a cookie-sheet.
“The second one’s young and looks reasonably healthy, but because of his constant heavy drug use, he might as well be armless and legless; he’s more incapacitated than Fat Che.â€
“The last one there looks pretty dangerous,†he advised, “especially given how you managed to rattle her cage; you really really really upset her, pissed her off.â€
“Yeah, she does have a lethal weapon,†I said; “her mouth. But the thing about her lethal weapon is that while it can wreak damage and injury on other people, it’s utterly useless against franksolich.
“The bell-shaped one can come up here all the way from San Diego, sit herself down at the dining room table and unleash her lethal weapon, her mouth, yakking and chattering and nagging and pontificating and flapping her jaws 24/7/365, but it’d have no deleterious effect on me, because I couldn’t hear her anyway.â€