hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer comes for Memorial Day

[franksolich]

note: hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer comes for Memorial Day is dedicated to her good pal and friend the grasswire primitive, whose comments about franksolich awoke from hibernation the literary muse.

This is a work of fiction, but the characters and events described therein are based upon actual people and events from those taking place out here in the middle of nowhere the past ten years.  I don’t have enough imagination to make up any of this stuff.

hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer comes for Memorial Day.  “Don’t let anybody camp here over Memorial Day,” I advised the property caretaker earlier this morning, “as I’ve already committed it.”

The caretaker, scanning the screen of his cellular telephone gulped, but I didn’t notice it at first.

“And don’t tell anybody they’re coming; I had enough problems as it was the last time they were here, this place more crowded and noisier than Grand Central Station, the whole county driving out to look at the hippies.

“And taking pictures of them, with their cellular telephones, their Kodak Instamatics, their old Polaroids.

“And then when the television station from Sioux City sent its helicopter to cover the event.....

“Oh no,” I continued; “I don’t want that again, even though the kids made out like bandits, $1087 from one-dollar admissions, plus what that nosy four-eyes kid made from selling popcorn, two hundred bucks or so.  It all had to be split seven ways, but for kids, even that was a lot of money.

“So I don’t regret doing it, but I just don’t want to do it again.”

The caretaker, still looking for something on his electronic toy, paused, as if remembering something.

“When you say ‘Memorial Day,’ do you mean next Monday, or do you mean May 30?”

“The real Memorial Day,” I said.

The caretaker gulped, and this time I noticed it.

“You already gave it away the weekend of the 30th?” I asked.

Yeah, he said; “an A.M.E. church, from Detroit.  They want to have one of those old time camp meetings here.”

This time, I gulped.

“Ooops,” I finally said; “being a stalwart friend of God and religion, I’d be delighted to have the fine folk of the African Methodist Episcopal church here, so as to elevate the moral climate of this place, but there’s a problem.

“Who else is coming is the Packer clan from northeastern Oklahoma, and hippyhubby Wild Bill hates God, hates religion.”

“Oh, them,” the caretaker said.  “How come they’re coming back?  They’re always coming back.”

“Wild Bill’s still looking for franksolich,” I answered; “he’s been up here plenty of times, and he badly wants to turn me into some white-paper-wrapped packages for his freezer.  It’s cheaper than buying meat at the grocery store.”

“You know, it’s really silly that hippyhubby hasn’t found you yet,” the caretaker responded; “I mean, he’s stood right in front of you s-o-o-o-o-o many times, just inches away.”

“Wild Bill thinks like a primitive,” I pointed out.  “He makes way too many hasty, impulsive judgements.

“He’s seen me, but’s written me off; I can’t possibly be franksolich, because I sound, well, so stupid, so retarded, when I talk.  He’s not aware that I’m deaf, and have no idea how I sound, but still, that’s a pretty hasty judgement on his part.

“He thinks [the business partner], who’s aesthetic and a good talker, is franksolich.

“But too bad for hippyhubby, because [the business partner]’s going to be away buying horses that weekend, down there in.....northeastern Oklahoma.

“Now, I think I have a solution to the problem,” I said, “but first, tell me about this A.M.E. group.”

The caretaker thumb-scanned the screen of his electronic toy again, looking for something.

“They’re led by Leroy somebody--ooops, here it, a guy named Lamond, who’s a charismatic revivalist--he’s on the public-access cable television in Detroit, but he’s so good, so inspirational, that he’s probably going to go national; he’s already brought thousands to Jesus.

“Oddly, he’s also a part-time radio disc jockey.  Former military, Air Force, about sixty but looks no older than forty.”

Hmmm, I said.  “Maybe, just maybe, this Larry or Leroy or Lamond can convert hippyhubby Wild Bill, save him.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“But I didn’t do it, Bill, I swear,” the high-pitched voice came through the opened window.

“Bill, Bill, Bill, don’t hurt me now,” it plaintively squealed.  “Please, Bill, don’t hurt me.

“You get too mean, Bill, when you’re upset.  I didn’t do it, Bill.

“Please, Bill, don’t hurt me.  No, Bill--”

After which followed a thud-thud-thud-bang-bang as Wild Bill slammed the head of his brother, the one with both eyes on the same side of his nose, against the converted Snap-On tool van, bloodying the signage, WILD BILL & BROS. WHOLESALE UNDERTAKERS DISCOUNT FOR QUANTITY.

Mrs. Alfred Packer, inside the house, sighed as she rubbed her upper arms.

I wish Wild Bill wouldn’t hurt people where it shows, hippywife thought to herself; it’s really hard to hide the bruises from people at work, and the nursing home patients.

She put a chipped-enamel basin down on the oilcloth covering the kitchen table, disconsolately sloshing some cold water in it so she could wash the dishes.

As she wiped the flatware with a cold greasy rag, Mrs. Alfred Packer silently asked herself again, why oh why did I marry that man, why oh why did I move away from Ohio down to here?  Nothing’s turned out the way I’d dreamed it would.

She’d been young, and not stout and drab once, she remembered; all that came after she met Wild Bill and married him twenty years before.  She’d met him on the internet, and gotten married at a rather late age, her mid-30s, past her child-bearing years.

Her thoughts roved back to about six years ago, when she’d been summoned up to Ohio from Oklahoma, as her ancient mother was dying.  The oldest in a large family, she’d been the “problem child,” generally because she thought she was better than everybody else, sentiments which she expressed often.

Her mother was still tenaciously hanging onto life when Mrs. Alfred Packer reached the hospital from the Greyhound bus terminal, and opened her eyes upon feeling the touch of her errant oldest child.

Her mother’s eyes watered upon beholding hippywife, and she whispered, “Please, daughter, please, daughter, come back.  Come back to your roots, your people, your place.  Come back to God, come back to Mother Church, come back to family, come back to Ohio.  Please, daughter, please come back.”

Mrs. Alfred Packer, holding her mother’s hand, began crying too.

She was wavering when the telephone on the bedside table rang.  It was hippyhubby Wild Bill, long-distance telephone-calling from Oklahoma.  “You’ve been up there long enough, woman, and’ve had plenty of time to say your good-byes.  Get your ass back down here, where you belong.”

Fearful of what Wild Bill might do, hippywife kissed her mother and went back to the bus station.

But barely had she gotten back when news came that her mother had left this time and place, and so she had to go up again.  Wild Bill had thrown a fit, because he’d planned on using the bus-fare money to bail one of his brothers, the one with the tongue outside of his mouth, out of jail.

Mrs. Alfred Packer sighed, but brightened when she remembered they all were going on a camping trip next week, up to that river in northern Nebraska, where lived that stranger; to dispel her melancholy, she fantasized about him being a handsome prince, bearing her away from this squalor and poverty in a diamond-encrusted chariot flying through the skies.

"I can dream, can’t I?” she asked herself.

to be continued

[franksolich]

“So this ‘old time camp meeting’?” the neighbor’s wife asked.  She was here with her 11-year-old son, the eager young lad, who was checking up on his 4-H project, the goat Rob.

Yeah, I said; it should be good.  “A whole lot of decent civilized modest reticent honest hardworking people getting together to have some clean fun--camping, barbequeing, picnicking, sunning, swimming, taking it easy, reading, stitching, napping, without any need to get drunk or high.

“And here and there, some rather, uh, vigorous preaching.

“Even if such isn’t one’s thing to do, everybody should try it at least twice or three times, as it’s more entertaining, more illuminating, more uplifting, than watching television.”

“Are you going to it?” she asked.

“Yeah; it’s not my kind of religion, too effervescent and huggy-huggy for me, but it doesn’t hurt to see new things every so often, to try new things.

“It opens the mind, expands the horizons, trying something different.

“That’s of course what separates us from the primitives, who want to stay in their ruts forever and ever.

“So I’ll go to a couple of their things, and I suggest you and the kids come and see it too; the big baptism ceremony’s that Saturday night, and I’ll be there for sure.”

“What about the other party, that hippie clan from Oklahoma?” she asked; “isn’t their leader, that old heavy guy with grey hair and a pony-tail, really hostile about religion?

“I hope you’re keeping them far apart, so maybe they won’t even see each other.”

Yeah, I said; “hippyhubby Wild Bill.  He hates God and religion with a passion.  To him, even Unitarians are despicable ‘fundies.’

“Well, both camps’ll be kept far enough apart so that Wild Bill and Lionel--”

“Lamond,” she interrupted.

“Yeah, whatever, and Lamond won’t get into it.”

“I wonder what he’s like,” she said.

“I looked him up on the internet,” I assured her; “but before that, I knew the A.M.E., the African Methodist Episcopal church, is of course a bona fide denomination, with a long history and tradition, its reputation impeccable. 

“It’s no ‘Church by the Blood of the Lamb Saved’ or ‘Church of Universal Triumph Dominion of God,’ or other store-front names.  And its ministers aren’t any Father Divines or Prophet Joneses or Daddy Graces; they’re real ministers.

“So I looked up this Lonnie guy--”

“’Lamond,’” she interrupted.

“His church biography,” I continued, “says earlier in his life, he was a bad one, a mean dude, a tough guy.  The snarly, menacing, sneering thug.

“After which the standard conversion story, and now he’s humble and selfless, having dedicated his life to spreading the Love of Christ.

“Well, that’s how he is now, but I was more interested in what he’d been then.

“Here,” I led her to the computer.  “By fortuitous chance, in his evil days, he’d been a primitive on Skins’s island, a ‘Lounge Lizard,’ a horny guy trying to pick up chicks.”

She looked, and broke out laughing.

“’I'm going to have sex with you tonight, you might as well be there to enjoy it.’

“Now, what sort of woman wouldn’t laugh at that line?”

“’Baby, you're the next contestant in the game of love--’”

She rolled over in merriment.

"‘You have 206 bones in your body. Want one more?--’”

“Who is this guy?” she asked.

“’Ok, I'm here, what do you want for your next wish?--’

“’There’s a party in my pants and you’re invited--’

“Lame, lame, lame,” she said; "with those lines, Lamond was doomed to celibacy.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“But Mizz Packer, I’ve been laying on my side for two days now, and have bed-sores.

“Please, Mizz Packer, turn me over,” Old Gruff whined.  “I can’t stand it any more.”

Mrs. Alfred Packer surveyed the patient laying on his bed in the nursing home. 

“But I said I’d turn you after you bought my newest creation in earrings,” she reminded him; “with genuine Svarovski crystals, and only $19.95.”

Earlier that morning, before she went to work, hippyhubby Wild Bill had complained to hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer, “You know, woman, you haven’t sold a damned thing on Etsy.com, and we’re going to need some money for our trip up north.

“In two months, you haven’t sold a damned thing.

“Get off your ass and get out there and sell, woman.”

“Buy that from me, and I’ll turn you over,” hippywife promised Old Gruff.

“But Mizz Packer, I’ve already bought earrings from you, a whole shoe-box full of them now.  I bought a pair so you’d feed me, I bought another pair so you’d empty my bedpan, I bought a third pair so you’d change the bed-sheets, I bought a fourth pair so you’d wheel me over to the window.

“When my daughter was here yesterday, she remarked it was rather odd, me being broke by the fourth of the month, and all these earrings.

“’What do you want earrings for?’ she asked me; ‘you’re a man, after all.’

“Please, Mizz Packer, turn me over.  The pain’s bad, real bad.”

“Well,” hippywife said, “if you can’t handle $19.95, how about this more-modest model at $11.95, with fake gems?”

to be continued

[franksolich]

The local pastor of the Assembly of God church came by here this evening (Wednesday evening), although he seemed greatly confused as to why I’d asked him over.

The property caretaker was here too, having supper.  His wife is out with “the girls” and he didn’t want to dine at the bar. It’s just easier to come here, take something out to grill outdoors, and to dine either in or out.

I’m not real familiar with this particular pastor, and not because our denominations are different; it’s just that he’s a quiet, soft-spoken sort, and myself being deaf, I find such people, no matter how otherwise decent and civilized they are, too hard to understand.

I’m sure I’ve missed out on a lot of great friendships in life, but well, it’s just one of those things about which nothing can be done.

“I need your help,” I immediately announced to him.

After which I explained to him the coming of the African Methodist Episcopalians the weekend of May 30, their charismatic preacher, and the old time camp meeting. 

“There’s going to be about eighty of them,” I told him, “and I’m wondering if somehow some of your own people can get involved in this, come out here and have fun with them, whatever.  Show them some of the world-famous Nebraska hospitality.

“They’re coming well-prepared--I only wish others who camped here were so half well-prepared--they’ve already rented some of those outhouses on wheels and a 10,000-gallon tank-truck on which to transport potable water, from some place in [the big city].

“They’ll be here from the evening of May 29th through the morning of June 1st, about three days.

“You know better than I do, what old time camp meetings are like; your people know what they’ll need, to have a good time here, and I want to be sure they have a good time.”

He thought they could do something, and complimented me, “You’re a very good man, to do this.”

Nonsense, I said; “to hear the primitives on Skins’s island, I’m the most vile creature that ever graced this world.  From my own viewpoint, I’m just doing my job, as a friend of God and religion, so as to encourage its diffusion and increasement.

“Now, because the ‘regular’ site here was already committed, I have to give them a different site, the property next door.  I want them around the bend of the river, so they won’t come into contact with the hipp--er, people camping here.

“You know the place; it’s on the other side of the grove of walnut trees.”

He looked at me, disappointed.  “But that’s not your property; how can you offer it?”

“I can offer it,” I said; “I can offer every square inch of its three-quarters of a square mile--”

“But it’s owned by--”

“Right,” I interrupted; “those interests back in New Jersey, who nobody knows who they are.”

The property adjacent here had been first settled in 1875, the same year as this place, but unlike this place, which has been under the same ownership the past 139 years, that patch of land quickly gained a reputation as bad luck; although the soil’s fertile and the water and sun are plenty, every owner of it seemed to come to a bad end.

Between 1875 and 1948, it went through bankruptcy nine times, and it appears none of its owners died natural deaths, although that may be apocryphal.

It was the summer of 1948 that a big black car pulled up in front of the local bank, out from which emerged two sunglassesed guys and an attorney of dubious reputation from the big city.  The guys with the shades, Meyer and Alberto, carried briefcases filled with currency, and they quickly concluded a deal with the bank to buy the property.

After which Meyer and Alberto were seen no more.

Since then--going on sixty-six years now, remember--two times a year the county assessor sends a property-tax bill to somewhere in New Jersey, and within a week or ten days, comes back a check for the taxes.

The land’s been fallow, unused; the rumor is that it’s a tax shelter for laundering other money, but as long as the county property taxes are paid, nobody worries about it.

When I first moved out here the autumn of 2005, the owner of this place--now ancient and in a nursing home--gave me a key, reminding me that only three people had such a key, and that it was to the place next door.  He also illuminated me that I was to be paid $100 a month by the owners, to “manage” it.

In such a casual informal manner has much business been transacted in this life.

“Managing” it has never been a job; there’s nothing to “manage.”

But two times a year, every March and September the past nine years, there’s arrived a check for $600 made out to me (although they insist upon spelling my first name incorrectly) from a legal firm in New Jersey--my semi-annual pay for taking care of the property.

There’s no habitable (or otherwise) dwelling on the property; the key’s to the front gate.

The front gate rusted away and blew off before I was even born, but I keep the key.

Once I tried tracking down the other two people who allegedly had keys to the place, and I did find them--a retired banker living in the Alzheimer’s unit of the local nursing home who of course had no idea what I was talking about.

The other guy was somebody in the big city, and when I looked for him, I learned he’d died in the state penitentiary in 2007.

I feel as if I’m the last surviving link to something, but I have no idea to what.

I once told the county sheriff that I’m in a really awkward situation; if I had a problem with the property (trespassers, squatters, whatnot), what was I to do?  Who was I to call?

He informed me I was to call him, and he would deal with it.

And no illumination beyond that.

I generally ignore it--there’s not a whole lot, after all, worth not ignoring--although during hunting seasons, I let “select” friends hunt on it.

to be continued

[franksolich]

Since it was still light outside, the pastor, the property caretaker, and I got into the caretaker’s pick-up truck to drive over to inspect the property.

Usually, one gets there by simply driving across the meadow, but as I wanted the pastor to know the route I wished his flock to take, we went the long way around, staying on the “road.”

“Your people know how to get here, of course,” I told him; “but I don’t want them to make any mistake about where they’re supposed to go.  Most of the time, when people talk about camping here, they go off the highway onto that one dirt path near the river.

“But that’s to get to the place near my backyard, which is where the hipp--er, other group’s going to be.

“They’re instead to come up my private driveway, and continue past the William Rivers Pitt for about another quarter of a mile, and turn right at the first break in the fence.  And then given the lay of the land, it should be obvious where they’re supposed to go.”

We rumbled over the cattle-grate, a contrivance that eliminates any necessity for having gates, drove past a thicket of trees where a hundred years or so ago there’d been a house, across the meadow, and finally to the banks of the river, which twists east at the property line from where I live, obscuring that property.

“This is beautiful,” the pastor said.  “I’ve lived around here all my life, but never saw this.

“You know, it has a reputation for being bad luck, and so most avoid it.”

Yeah, I said; some sort of silly superstition.

The three of us walked alongside the banks of the river, looking for the best location for the baptism ceremony scheduled to take place the Saturday night our guests from Detroit are here; noting my unfamiliarity with the terrain, the pastor commented, “You’ve never seen that?  This place is beautiful.”

No, I hadn’t, I said.  “Remember, I don’t come out here that often; the last time I was here was a couple of years ago, in an October, just before hunting season.  Usually, I just leave the place alone.”

When we left, I reminded him, “Okay, you have Lester’s telephone number--”

“’Lamond,’” the caretaker interrupted; “’Lamond.’”

“Whatever,” I continued; “you got his telephone number; give him a call--he’s expecting it--and iron out the details with him.  I want these folks to have a good time, a great time.”

- - - - - - - - - -

The investigator from the state headquarters of the Oklahoma highway patrol came into the sheriff’s office, plopping down on a chair.

“We’re having that problem again,” he said, pulling out a ten-dollar bill.

“This fake was passed at a thrift store forty miles away from here.”

The sheriff closely inspected the bill.  “That’s a pretty good counterfeit, but all of them have been pretty good.  They’re always ten-dollar bills, and they’re always passed at second-hand stores, rummage sales, and damaged-goods discount grocery stores.

“But the meanest was when twenty of those fakes were dropped into a collection-basket for the Little Sisters of Charity one Christmas; the nuns were awed by the magnanimity, but then they turned out fake.

“Somebody around here has a dirty, mean, streak in him.

“The good, kind, decent Little Sisters of Charity, of all people--”

“Are you still watching the same suspect you had in mind last year?” the state investigator interrupted.

Yeah, the sheriff said; “But he’s a rather sneaky character, Wild Bill.

“We watch and watch and watch, but nobody ever sees him paying for anything with a ten-dollar bill.

“Our current guess, which is only a guess, is that he uses his hippywife to pass them.

“Wild Bill’s a pretty dominating character, and it’s known that hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer has to turn over her weekly paycheck from the nursing home to him, and that payments for costume jewelry that she sells on the internet are directed into his paypal account.

“In exchange, he gives her an allowance of ten dollars a week, for her to spend on herself.

“I’ll bet he gives her one of these bills.

“But damn, we can’t ever catch them, either him or her, doing it.”

“Well, what do you know about this hippywife character?”

“Oh, she’s from Ohio, and came here about twenty years ago, after she’d married our local miscreant.

“Originally, she was all uppity and aloof from us, denigrating us as ‘fundies’ and ‘Jesus freaks‘ and ‘rednecks’ and ‘ignorant rethugs,’ and making fun of our ways.

“She never made any effort to get along, to see all the very good reasons we are the ways we are.

“But over time, she changed; she packed on pounds, lots of them, her hair got grey, and she’s a notorious user of mood-altering pharmaceuticals.  Medically prescribed of course, but so many as to suggest this is one Hell of an unhappy woman.

“She’s pretty drab, nondescript, and usually wears a muu-muu.  Also, when she’s not at work, she’s barefooted, as hippyhubby Wild Bill locks up her shoes so she can’t run away.” 

“Any peculiar patterns to this passage of bad bills?” the investigator asked.

“Well, there is one, that we’re going to be watching next week,” the sheriff said.  “For some reason, about this very same time every year for the past five years in a row--always the Memorial Day weekend, or close to it--counterfeit ten-dollar bills seem to pop up in a straight line from here clear up to Nebraska’s border with South Dakota.

“It’s gotten so bad that convenience stores and gasoline stations on the way, when offered a ten-dollar bill by somebody, ask, “Can you give me two fives instead?”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“’…..the collection plates used to be filled more with firearms than with money, and sometimes still do, whenever Reverend Lamond speaks.

“’The guns, when traced, are usually found to have been stolen from registered owners.

“’In every neighborhood in which Reverend Lamond speaks, crime rates plummet as he implores his audience, “Jesus loves you; come to Jesus.”’

“’And come they do, by the thousands…..’”

The femme was reading from a magazine article she’d found at the library in the big city, one of those supermarket celebrity rags, with a photograph of the minister on the front cover.

“I don’t understand his attraction,” I said; “I mean, he looks like a pineapple mounted upon a bigger pineapple.  Not a turn-on at all.”

“It’s his voice,” the femme said; “I listened to part of one of his sermons on the internet before coming here, and he’s got a good voice, a really compelling, persuasive voice.

“I think it’s a really good voice.”

Oh, I said.  “Well, that’s nothing I’d know anything about, not being able to hear voices.”

“Let me know,” the femme instructed, “when you decide which sermons you’re going to go watch, because I want to come along.”

“You don’t want to come along to hear Lonnie speak--”

“’Lamond,’” she interrupted; “’Lamond.’”

“Whatever,” I said; “you’re coming along only because you’re afraid I’ll get into some sort of trouble.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know, that’s one of my biggest discouragements in life,” I told the business partner as we rode down the highway.  “For years, decades, I’ve always advocated stepping outside of one’s box once in a while--not always, but once in a while--to see or do something totally new, so as to broaden one’s horizons and open one’s mind.

“But in today’s society, it seems everybody’s turning into primitives.

“If it’s something with which they’re unfamiliar, they don’t want to deal with it.

“It’s a lack of confidence, fear, nothing more than that.”

The business partner, who lives further into the Sandhills of Nebraska than I do, had to pick up a horse, and we were on our way there.  I was driving, as the trailer was empty.  As I won’t pull anything with a living thing in or on it, the business partner was going to have to drive us back.

Because of my being deaf, such trips turn into disjointed stream-of-consciousness conversations and chitchattery.  When someone’s talking to me, I have to see the person.  One can’t drive and watch another person at the same time; one can do only one thing or the other.

So when he drives, he talks and I watch.  When I drive, I talk and he listens.

“Well, everybody’s going to come to Lyle’s camp meeting--”

“’Lamond,’” the business partner interrupted; “’Lamond.’”

“Whatever,” I went on; “but it’s only to please me, not for themselves to get illuminated or entertained, or both.

“It’s so frustrating.  A couple of hours of seeing something novel and different can’t hurt, and probably oftentimes helps.

“I’ve been reminded, ‘Well, it’s odd because it doesn’t fit your own temperament‘--which is true, because to me, God and religion inspires Great Awe and Solemnity, while to others, such as this group coming from Detroit, it inspires goodwill and fellowship and hugging and touching.

“Which is so; it doesn’t match my temperament, and such intimacy makes me ill at ease, uncomfortable.

“But it’s not anything that’s going to kill me, and in fact it might even illuminate or amuse me.

“It’s like when I have all these people, usually freeloading hippies, camping at my place during the summer.

“Most think it’s a lot of trouble, a nuisance, an irritant--and sometimes even a peril to my own safety and life, given many of their criminal pasts--and remind me I really don’t have to deal with it.

“Well, hippies aren’t my thing, and I’d rather they’d never existed, but they’re here and nothing can be done about it, so one might as well get some innocent merriment out of them.

“And if they don’t amuse me on their own, there’s my ‘special gift’ of provoking other people, animating them, cattle-prodding them, into being ridiculous, and hence entertaining.”

The business partner groaned. 

“But them, the Packer clan out of Oklahoma.  I think most of us concerned for you wish it’d be some other hippies, not them.  They’re bad news, especially hippyhubby Wild Bill.

“And she’s kind of disturbing too, always ogling you, that look of longing.  You know she fantasizes about hopping around in the sack with you.”

“Yeah, I know, but it ain’t never gonna happen,” I replied.

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Okay now, ma and sis are coming with us, to keep hippywife company; she needs some womenfolk around her, lest she get balky and sulky,” hippyhubby Wild Bill announced at the supper-table.

“But we’re going to need a second vehicle, besides the hearse, to transport everybody.

“I think we’ll use the ‘67 Ford pick-up truck, if you boys can get all four wheels spinning the same direction.

“We’ll put the camp gear in the back of that, and jam all but three us in the van.

“We’re leaving next Thursday night, and should be up there by Friday morning for the hunt.”

“But you’re going to leave the other one alone, right?” hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer asked, nervously.

“I mean, he hasn’t done anything, the other one.”

Wild Bill snorted.  “Him?  The retard?

“We won’t have anything to do with him, other than that we’re camping at his place; we’re going up there to bag the big one, franksolich.”

“Please don’t hit me, Bill,” whined the brother born with his nose upside down; “but why do we have to get franksolich at all.  Why can’t we just go up there and have some fun?”

“Yeah,” chimed in the brother born without a chin; “let’s just go up there and have fun.  Screw franksolich.”

Wild Bill slammed his fist down on the table, rattling the dishes on the torn oilcloth.

“You boys need to understand,” he said; “there’ll be no peace until franksolich is little packages in the freezer, for our dining pleasure.

“I’m tired of his snooping around here, spying on us.

“He’s peeked in our windows, tapped our telephone and internet, recorded our conversations, hid underneath our connubial bed, watched us from behind the trees, opened and read our mail, inquired of the neighbors and law-enforcement.

“There’s no way he could know as much about us as he does, if he hasn’t done all that.

“Damn, he even knows when I let loose with intestinal gas while sleeping.

“He knows too much, and he’s got to be gotten rid of.”

“But how do you know he knows all that, that way?” squeaked the brother with both eyes on the same side of his nose.  “Please don’t hit me Bill, but how do you know?

“He says he’s never been closer to here than Norton, Kansas, and that’s pretty far north. 

“And nobody around here’s ever seen anybody who looks like him.”

Wild Bill spat on the floor.  “Well, Mr. Know-It-All, Your Majesty High-and-Mighty, how else would he know what goes on here, if he wasn’t actually here to see it?”

“Please don’t hit me Bill,” said the cross-eyed brother; “but maybe he knows all this other ways.

“Remember, hippywife’s the chatty sort, especially when she was hanging around with the other primitives in the cooking and baking forum.  Over the years, she spilled enough beans to fill a grain elevator--”

“Well, still, franksolich knows too much, and needs eliminated,” interrupted hippyhubby.

“And how do you know the other one’s franksolich?” the brother with both eyes on the same side of his nose brought up.  “Nobody’s ever formally identified himself, and so all we know is that one of the two is franksolich.

“The question is, which one?”

“Are you stupid, or what?” Wild Bill retorted.  “It’s the handsome one, the blond one, the shorter one, the good talker.  Anybody who talks as good as he does, has to be franksolich.

“It can’t be the retard.  He’s dumber than a rock.

“Jeezuz, I never met somebody so dumb as he is.

“He probably drives people nuts, with that voice of his, so broad and flat and slow, like cold molasses.”

Mrs. Alfred Packer spoke up, although shakily.  “Maybe it’s something else, Bill; maybe there’s another sort of problem that makes him talk like that.  He doesn’t mumble, he speaks clearly, and his eye-contact rivets.  He never has to repeat himself; he’s perfectly understandable the first time one hears him.

“He sounds as if he’s memorized and practiced every word, and talks as if reading from a book; it’s a peculiar voice, but it’s not the voice of somebody stupid.”

Wild Bill snorted, blasting a big one out of a nostril, it splatting onto the table.

“Don’t hit me, Bill,” the cross-eyed brother said, “but something tells me franksolich isn’t who and what you think he is.

“You’re not right all the time, Bill.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

The neighbor had to come pick up something out here shortly before noon, and we decided to go dine at the bar in town.

Swede, the cook of Norwegian derivation whose specialty is Italianate cuisine, and also the husband of the owner of the bar, was working.  That was unusual, because Swede usually does supper, not lunch.

“I heard you’re having some special guests out there next weekend,” he said to me before we ordered.

Yeah, I said; “A bunch of Methodists from Michigan who’re going to hold a revival meeting--”

“No, not them,” Swede interrupted.  “I heard you’re having some other special guests.”

Damn, I thought; news gets around fast.

And the odd thing about it being that hearing people don’t need to actually hear things to know about them; they seem to just pick up information out of the thin air.

“Well, sure, but forget about them.  You’re invited to come out and hear Laurence preach--”

“’Lamond,’” Swede corrected me; “’Lamond.’”

Whatever, I replied, and ordered my usual, a hamburger very well done, pressed down hard on the grill so as to squeeze out every drop of grease, french fries cooked on the grill, not in the fryer, and a side dish of sour cream.

The neighbor ordered the special of the day,  pizzette e salatini, minestra di pasta con pesce, coppia ferrarese, pizza quattro stagioni, tagliatelle ai carciofi, risotto allo zafferano con petto d'anatra, cotoletta alla milanese, carciofi alla romana and for dessert, zabaglione.

“You know something’s going to happen,” the neighbor advised me, “even though you’ll have the two groups far separated, around the bend of the river.

“And given hippyhubby Wild Bill’s hatred of God and religion, he’s likely to go rabid, sputtering and frothing and spitting.  I’ve never seen anybody get so red-faced, well, demonic, at even the slightest mention of the subject.”

Uh-huh, I said; “Wild Bill’s got a problem all right.

“Maybe he needs to learn that other people don’t think like he does, and that the more he pushes things, the more likely they are to not think like he does.

“The guy’s an ambulatory cauldron of Hate; he needs cooled off.”

“I know what’s going on here,” the neighbor said.  “You’re doing this on purpose.  You could’ve turned down one of the two groups, or found another place miles and miles away for one of them, but you were strangely insistent upon putting them in close proximity.

“I know what’s going on here.”

I acted hurt.  “Nothing’s going on; I just set things up the best way possible.”

The neighbor laughed. 

“As if I hadn’t know you for more than twenty years now, back when I was in college and you were running the Reunion.  You were doing these sorts of things back then, and you were probably doing them years before we even met.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I insisted; “it’s just the way it all worked out.”

“Yeah, right,” he laughed again.

“Look, you’re deaf, and cut off from the mainstream of people and society.

“You get bored easily, because all the things hearing people do, don’t or can’t interest you.

“You don’t want to sit around twiddling your thumbs, like you had to do when cooped up last winter, unable to get out.  It drove you nuts.

“Add to that your ‘special’ talents as a stage manager and director, putting on a play--and your natural curiosity about what happens when someone’s presented with the unexpected or the preposterous.

“The whole world’s a stage to you, and you’ve ‘directed’ some rather awesome ‘productions.’

“I have a feeling that’s what’s going to happen next weekend, and wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

The neighbor’s wife was here early in the morning, along with all the kids; their 12-year-old twin daugthers, the 11-year-old eager young lad, the 6-year-old son, and the 2-year-old daughter. 

The eager young lad wanted to check up on his 4-H project, Rob the goat, who’s kept out here so as to grow big and fat on the lush foliage.  After that, they were all headed to the big city for the weekly shopping.

For years, I accompanied them--the neighbor himself loathes shopping, as do I--especially when she was with infant, but with the slow but steady deterioration of the infrastructure inside of me, I do it less and less these days. 

While she and I were sitting out on the back porch drinking coffee, and the kids playing around, her brother-in-law, the neighbor’s older brother, came by and joined us.

He inquired how plans were going, for the old time camp meeting next weekend.

“I think Lamar’s going--”

“’Lamond,’” the neighbor’s older brother corrected me; “’Lamond.’”

“Whatever,” I replied, “I think he’s going to be happy, as there’s going to be quite a few locals here too.”

“The weather forecast for next weekend says some rain,” the neighbor’s older brother pointed out.

“Yeah, I saw that,” I said; “but no big deal, as it’s supposed to be only a little bit of rain, and--and--and--it might have a dampening effect on hippyhubby Wild Bill’s temper when they’re camping here.”

“Are you sure both groups are going to be kept far enough apart?” the neighbor’s wife asked.

“I think so,” I said; “inevitably they’re going to discover each other, but it might take some time, and the sheer distance might ameliorate any violence that ensues.  There’ll probably be some sort of ruckus, given Will Bill’s hatred of God and religion, but I’m counting on only a minor dust-up, no more than that.

“Not much, but enough to make life exciting out here.”

Changing the subject, the neighbor’s wife asked, “Why do you think that land’s considered cursed?

“It’s so pretty there, but everybody says it’s bad luck.”

The neighbor’s wife, like franksolich, is not a native of this area, and so didn’t grow up on any of the local folklore.

“I don’t think it’s cursed,” I said; “I think that’s an undeserved reputation based upon the unhappy lives and fates of the first eight owners of the place, ostensibly none of whom died in their beds.

“But those owners were known gamblers, drinkers, spendthrifts, wife-beaters, with significant character flaws, so I don’t think their ownership of the land had anything to do with it.  Such people come to bad ends anyway, no matter where they’re at and what they own.

‘On the other hand, Meyer and Alberto--or rather, Meyer and Alberto’s heirs, seem to have done pretty good by it, since…..1948.

“Meyer died of old age in 1983,” I explained; “Alberto had died in some sort of barbershop accident in a hotel in New York City about twenty years earlier than that, but they both had a good run with it for some years, and their heirs, even more years.”

The neighbor’s older brother, what with a wife and four children, is concerned for the future, and has tried buying the property south of here, with no success, a certain legal firm back in New Jersey always responding, “Our clients are not interested in selling.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

A friend showed up last evening, and proposed that she was going to stay for the week.

I looked at the femme.

The femme of course doesn’t live here, but she didn’t seem to object.

“Well, actually it would be good to have somebody here all week long,” the neighbor said, “because one has no idea what’s going to happen--”

“Whatever happens, I got it under control,” I interrupted; “after all, it’s not like I’m not used to awkward or preposterous situations.

“In fact, I think I’m rather good at handling them.”

“It’s not that,” the neighbor said; “it’s hippyhubby Wild Bill, the crazy old hippie who seems to have it in for you.  And because you can’t hear, he can come up from behind you, or on either side, and garotte you before you even have any idea he’s there.”

“And there’s hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer,” the femme pointed out; “she’s got all these goo-goo eyes for you, and you’re the easiest person in the world, to seduce.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but I let it pass.

“Well, exactly what’s to happen this week?” the newly-arrived friend asked.

“As far as I know,” I replied, “the Packer clan from Oklahoma should be here sometime Thursday morning, and they’ll camp at the usual place.  There’ll be eleven of those, hippyhubby Wild Bill, hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer, Wild Bill’s ma, Wild Bill’s sis, and Wild Bill’s seven brothers.

“They’ll be here through next Sunday evening.

“And then there’s going to be Lenny and his flock--”

“’Lamond,’” the femme interrupted, “’Lamond.’”

“Well, they’ll get here Thursday evening, and camp in the meadow around the curve of the river, half a mile away.

“There’ll be about eighty of them, and they’re going back to Detroit Sunday morning.

“There’s going to be a lot of their local brethren here too, to cook out and picnic and whatever else one does at an old-time camp meeting, with them.

“The baptism in the river’s Saturday evening--they do the ‘total immersion’ thing--and that, I plan to go see, as it’s something I’ve never seen before.

“It’s good for people to see new things,” I reminded everybody; “it opens the mind, expands the consciousness.

“We’re not primitives, after all, who can‘t handle dealing with things new to them.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know, after the Packer clan leaves, I’m going to leave these tables down here.

“No point in always moving them from here back up to the house, and then back here again.”

The property caretaker, the neighbor, the neighbor’s son the eager young lad, and my recently-arrived visitor, along with myself, were unloading picnic tables from the backs of three pick-up trucks.

“For years, I’ve wondered when you were ever going to decide that,” the neighbor said.

These are not contemporary lightweight picnic tables with aluminum legs and balsa-wood tops and seats; they’re probably 90-100 years old, handmade, and of really heavy wood, wood about as heavy as iron.

“Well, I was never sure,” I told the neighbor; “after every time somebody camped here, I said to myself, ‘Okay, that’s it, no more campers,’ and had them taken back up to the house.”

After which there was desultory chitchat about the Packer clan.

“They’re primitives,” I said; “even when one does a primitive a favor, the primitive demands more, and that it be in such-and-such a way.  They’re never grateful for what they get; they always want more, more, more, without they themselves having to lift a finger.

“I don’t think I’m going to do primitives any more favors.”

After we were done, the caretaker asked, “Okay, what do we have to do to get the other place ready for the other people?”

“Not a thing,” I said; “Lemoyne’s people--”

“’Lamond,’” interrupted the eager young lad, “’Lamond.’”

“Well, anyway,” I continued, “they’re bringing all of the stuff they need, including large plastic trash bags.

“All eighty of them are coming in three 72-passenger old government-surplus yellow school buses packed to the gills with their stuff, and stuff tied on top too, and I guess one of them’ll be pulling a trailer.

“And they’ve rented all those mobile outhouses, and a tank truck for potable water from the big city.

“These people are prepared, and they’re going out of their way to not be any trouble at all.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

I was sitting at a picnic table, gazing up the river and smoking a cigarette, when suddenly a hand touched my shoulder.

It was a good thing I was wearing brown pants.

But it was just my house-guest, who’d walked down from there after seeing me in the distance.

It’s a very hot, humid, day, this Memorial “Day” (the real one’s the 30th, remember), and I’d driven down there, but she’d walked.  It’s not a short distance, from the back porch to there.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

Nothing in particular, I said; “just random things.

“For example, I’m thinking about my early childhood on the Platte River, where my three older brothers took my younger brother to camp, to fish, to cook out.

“I went one time, when I was about four years old, but as it wasn’t my thing to do, I didn’t do it again.”

I lit another cigarette.

“You know, every year the week before Labor Day, a big carnival used to come to town.

“And every year, my younger brother and I used to each be given a long string of tickets; not half a dozen, not a dozen, but many more than that.

“I never thought about the source of the tickets; if given something, I simply accepted it without question.

“It wasn’t until they were all gone, and by random chance I mentioned it to someone else, the tickets, and was illuminated that beginning the week before the carnival came to town, the three older brothers and their friends, then in high school, used to spend a great deal of time fishing on the Platte River, putting the carcasses on ice, and then when the carnies showed to set things up, traded the fish for tickets.

“Apparently they fished well, and got miles of tickets.”

She poured herself some orange juice from a one-gallon thermos jug I’d brought down.

“You take Memorial Day differently than most do,” she commented.

Yeah, I admitted; “for me, it’s always been a religious holiday, a time to solemnly remember all those who went before me.  And it seems every year, I suddenly remember yet another reason to be grateful for them.

“After my younger brother died, a year after our mother and two years after our father, the surviving seven of us agreed to go back to the Sandhills every Memorial Day, for some sort of family reunion.

“I was all for it; it was on neutral ground, as none of us lived there any more, and this once-a-year meeting would alleviate me from having to devise excuses to not go to one of their homes other holidays.”

I rubbed sweat off my forehead.  “Ah, there were problems between the older six and this seventh one.

“It was more than a great gulf in ages; they’d turned out hippies, Democrats, and liberals, although fortunately none of them ever reached the primitive stage.  And I’d turned out the way I had.

“There was a joke, told outside of our family, that the first six, all of them born close together in New York, had been raised by the book of Dr. Benjamin Spock.  And then there was a gap of many years, which included the family moving to Nebraska. 

“It was assumed that was the largest the family’d ever be, and so the book was thrown away.

“But then I showed up, and two years later, my younger brother.  Not having the book to guide them any more, the parents raised the two of us purely by instinct.

“It was like two different families, two different pairs of parents.

“But great as the problems between all of them and me, they also had problems between each other--in hindsight, this was a very contentious family--whose nature of which I was never clear, because these were events and people long before my own time.

“And so that’d be the damper on these Memorial Day reunions.

“However, I remembered that my older brothers and sisters behaved in front of company, and so the first year, I brought company, four of my college classmates and roommates.

“It was great; there were no squabbles, no arguments, no fights.  Everybody was mellow.

“The second year, I came with the same four friends again, and everybody behaved. 

“But that was the last time; when the third year rolled around, much to my confusion I learned nobody else in the family was interested in having the get-together.

“It wasn’t until years later that it struck me--I’m a slow learner--they weren’t used to this, everybody being mellow and having a good time, and it made them uncomfortable.  They were accustomed more to squabbling, arguing, fighting amongst themselves, and with me.

“What does one do with such people?” I asked as I lit another cigarette.

“But at the same time, they all could be kind, very kind, kinder to me than what I really deserved.

“My father died when I was 17 years old, and just as his estate was getting settled, my mother died, and for whatever reason, both estates were rolled up into one.  That was almost settled when my younger brother died, and for whatever reason, his estate was combined with theirs, into one.

“Settlement was held up from my graduation from high school clear until my graduation from college.

“When I got my check--four or five weeks after graduation from college--I deposited the check and threw away the accompanying papers.  I already knew what the papers involved anyway; the assets and liabilities of the three combined estates, what bills were paid, what was left over, and assumed things had been split seven ways equally among all of us.

“It took me twelve years to spend all that money, and that was about the time the brother who’d been executor of all three estates died.  When I was going through his papers, I found the originals of the photocopies I’d been sent twelve years before, and this time I read them.

“This brother had absolute control over everything, and in fact could’ve taken the whole thing, and it would’ve been legal, but had given me to understand that it all would be split equally among all the children of our parents.

“It hadn’t been, though; he’d divided it eight ways, including our deceased younger brother, and given me not only my share, but the share devoted to him.  I’d given one-quarter, not one-seventh.

“When I inquired of my last surviving brother about the matter, I learned the issue had been discussed and agreed upon by all of them (minus myself, of course).  Apparently their attitude was that they were all mature, established in good careers, and financially stable.

“And then there was me, 20-21 years old, the youngest, and not thought likely to have an easy life.

“They were always worried whether or not I was going to make it.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know woman, you should’ve worked today,” hippyhubby Wild Bill said.

“The time-and-a-half you would’ve gotten would’ve incremented the gasoline money considerably.”

“But I’m tired, Bill, and besides, I have to get us ready for the trip.”

“Woman, you’re always tired; one’d think you were the only one who ever did any work around here.

“But given the size of that ass, it doesn’t look as if you’re overworked.”

Mrs. Alfred Packer sighed.

“And now you better be going to fix supper,” hippyhubby reminded her; “what’re we going to have?”

“Chinese,” hippywife said, “although there’s not much of it left.  The freezer’s pretty bare.”

It was perhaps time the freezer was nearly empty, as it’d been two months since the peddler’s pack of Hop Sing, who sold cookware door-to-door, had been discovered in the woods.  Just the pack, nothing else, other than a counterfeit ten-dollar bill inside.

“It looks as if he was consumed by a wild animal,” the county sheriff had said.  “A bear, maybe, or a wolf.”

Mrs. Alfred Packer pulled out her collection of matching pots-and-pans, so as to get started.

“Well, that’s okay, let’s just eat it all up,” hippyhubby Wild Bill said.

“By this time next week, the freezer should be packed full again, with Nebraska steaks.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

hippyhubby Wild Bill came storming inside the door, cursing and fuming.

“The boys aren’t going to be able to get the pick-up truck going, and so we’ll all have to get up there in the hearse.  The problem being, everybody won’t fit into it.  I can’t have anybody riding in the boat we’ll be taking, because the pigs are going to be watching us, and the last thing we want are cops.  We’ll have to leave some behind--”

hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer heaved a sigh of relief; “Maybe ma and sis don’t have to come along?”

To be honest, Mrs. Alfred Packer was never much impressed by them; Wild Bill’s ma is 88 years old and incontinent, and hasn’t spoken for some years, her eyes perpetually glazed over.  Wild Bill’s sis has bulging eyes about ready to pop out, and big buckteeth that’d serve a moose; she also has the irritating habit of, when sitting next to hippywife, trying to grasp under and up under her muu-muu.

“But you need some womenfolk to keep you company,” hippyhubby pointed out; “otherwise you get all pouty and balky, when it’s just you and we menfolk.

“And you know I don’t like it when you pout and sulk.”

True, hippywife knew that Wild Bill didn’t care much for her ‘moods’.”

“But it’s okay, Bill; I’ll be good, Bill, I promise, because Judy’s going to meet us there.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Well, what’s on tap today?” my visitor asked while she was making breakfast for the two of us, broccoli and cheese.

“I’m not sure,” I replied, “and it’s my last free day until trouble bubbles.

“Maybe we could go to [the big city] and pick up some stuff.”

“Sure,” she said, as she sat down at the table.  “But I’m still not clear about what’s going to happen this weekend.”

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen, other than that it’s going to be a great opportunity to observe volatile, explosive sociology and anthropology in real time, in real life; to observe primitives in real time, in real life, instead of on the screen of a computer.”

I laid out the schedule.

“Sometime this evening, or early in the morning tomorrow, the advance men for Lance’s--”

“’Lamond,’” she interrupted me; “’Lamond.’”

“Anyway, the advance men should show up either this evening or early in the morning, to get things ready out in Meyer’s and Alberto’s meadow, for the old-time camp-meeting.

“About midnight tonight, shortly after hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer gets off the 3-11 shift at the nursing home down in northeastern Oklahoma, the Packer clan’s leaving there to come up here.

“They should be here sometime very early tomorrow morning, to camp at their usual spot, while the church group is just taking off from Detroit, and that second group should arrive about suppertime, early evening.

“It’s going to be like Grand Central Station out here.”

“Okay, what then?” she asked.

I dunno, I said; “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You drive, because I want to talk,” I said as we walked to car to go to the big city.

“You’re kind of out of sorts,” she said, as we headed down the highway.

“Yeah, I know, and I’m sure it shows,” I admitted.

“One of my literary critics said that my writing’s ‘sappy, self-absorbed.’”

“Well, I’m not sure what I’d call it, other than that you have so many different styles and all of them are good,” she pointed out.  “Your writing’s miles and miles ahead of what that incorrigibly drunken guy in southwestern New Hampshire writes.

“By the way, he’s put on weight,” she added; “he’s ballooning up to the size of the Las Vegas Leviathan; he’s not there yet, but he’s getting there.”

Yeah, I said; “fat, stupid, and rich.

“But anyway, I thought about this ‘sappy’ part, and she’s right.  I am maudlin, sentimental, cloying, saccharine, syrupy, mawkish, whatever.

“But it’s me; I can’t help being myself.

“I take after my paternal grandmother, my father’s mother.

“Now usually when talking of grandmothers, I talk of my mother’s mother in northeastern Pennsylvania, and only rarely of my father’s mother in northwestern Pennsylvania.

“It’s not because I preferred one over the other--no way--but simply because myself being a late child, any grandparents I had were either dead or didn’t hang around long after I was born.  This was the case with my father’s mother, who died in her late 70s when I was eight years old.

“She lived with us alongside the Platte River of Nebraska from the time I was two until I was five, and my memories of her are vague and sketchy.  She lived with us because she needed all sorts of surgery in her old age, and my father wanted doctors in Nebraska, not in Pennsylvania, to do it.

“She was reasonably tall, but matronly, not fat.  She wore bottle-bottomed eyeglasses, and whatever fat on her sagged as if water, not fat.  Her ankles spilled over the tops of her shoes.  She was definitely puffy.

“Diabetes.

“Decades and decades and decades before my time, she’d been a writer, and did rather well at it.  As far as I can count, she wrote eleven books, all of them hardcover; the 1910s, 1920s, 1930’s versions of contemporary Harlequin romance novels, but again, hardcover, not cheap paperbacks.

“She wrote poetry too, that was published in the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies’ Home Journal, Collier’s Weekly, and big-city newspapers of the time.

“That’d long ago stopped, her glory days, by the time I was around.

“Most of my memories of her are those of me sitting on her lap while she sat in her rocking-chair, reading to me.  Now, I was deaf, besides really young, and while she may have been reading aloud, it seems to me she mostly used a finger to ‘trace out’ illustrations.

“It might be that she was the first person to make me aware that people made sounds, as most photographs of the two of us show me with the top of my head strongly jammed against the bottom of her chin.

“She read children’s books of the era, her era, the twilight of the Victorian age.  My favorite, and hers too, was The Little Match-Girl, and also there was The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, The Little Lame Lamb, the Dutch boy who jammed his finger into the dyke, the little girl reunited with her long-lost pet collie dog, the little boy who died saving his mother from a fire, the little girl who valiantly took care of her brothers and sisters as their widower father drank himself into the grave, the brave newsboy who saved a horse from an abusive owner, and somesuch other rich literary fare. 

“All the surgeries done, she went back home about the time I entered kindergarten, and that was the last I ever saw of her.

“Much to my surprise, in later years when listening to the older brothers and sisters talk about her, I was told what an annoying, interfering, irritating pain she’d been to have around.  Allegedly even our own mother, a paragon of patience, had ‘problems’ with her.

“Reminiscences which I disregarded as fiction and fantasy; they just never got to know her.

“They being loud, raucous teenagers at the time, naturally they felt ‘stifled’ by an old lady.  It was nothing more than that.  Our grandmother was an angel, a gift from God, and they were being selfish for not seeing that.

“Ah, grandmothers--and what kids today are missing out on, because grandma’s--in one case a great-great-grandmother’s--posting on the internet instead of spending time with them.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“What do you suppose makes them that way?” she asked as we were driving home; “why do they Hate so much?”

I was driving.

“There’s three kinds of people in contemporary society,” I said; “the largest of which are people who aren’t religiously inclined--maybe 67%, 75%, 90% of the population, I dunno--but at least tolerant of the existence of those of us who are.

“A lot of your friends, and my friends, are in that category.  They’re not going to jump up and down getting all excited about God and religion, because it doesn’t fill any need inside of them.  But at the same time, they’re not going to get all angry and red-white-and-blue in the face because some of us have that need, and work to fulfill it.

“I’m sure you like I find it a very amicable association, between people who don’t feel any particular need for it, and people who do.  ‘If it works for you, cool, great, wonderful.’

“The third category’s people who aren’t indifferent towards God and religion, but people who vigorously Hate God and religion, and all those for whom God and religion are important.

“Both hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer and hippyhubby Wild Bill are in that category.

“Mrs. Alfred Packer because she’s a lapsed Catholic, and I tell you, there’s nobody who can Hate better than a lapsed Catholic.  The great majority of the most evil, the most vile, the most Hateful primitives on Skins’s island, for example, have at one time or another identified themselves as a lapsed Catholic.

“I have no idea why that is--a lapsed Baptist, a lapsed Presbyterian, a lapsed Jew, a lapsed Unitarian, a lapsed Buddhist, a lapsed whatever else but Catholic, are capable of hating, with the lower-case ’h.’

“But the Hate of a lapsed Catholic puts to shade the mere hate held by all these others.

“And then in the case of hippyhubby Wild Bill, well, he’s from what Democrats, liberals, and primitives call ‘white trash’ behind their backs, but what decent and civilized people call ‘born on the wrong side of the tracks.’

“I’m sure that earlier in life Wild Bill was wounded, hurt, by, uh, certain sorts of comments others made about him.

“And such things were probably in fact untrue, unfair, and uncalled-for.

“But then he handled it all wrong, blaming God when he should’ve instead remembered that to God, Wild Bill was just as good as anybody else walking this earth.  If he’d listened to God instead of to other people, he probably would’ve turned out okay.”

As I drove up into the front yard, we both saw an older sedan with a trailer behind it, parked there, and out from which emerged, as we approached, two gentlemen of a complexion darker than ours.

“Lucius’s advance men,” I said.

“’Lamond,’” she answered; “’Lamond.’”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Ah,” I said as I neared them; “Reverend Ladislav’s advance party, I take it.”

The older of the two, a guy in his 40s but with a touch of grey in the hair, introducing himself as George, shook my hand, “It’s Brother ‘Lamond,’ friend, ‘Lamond.’”

Sorry, I said; “It’s just that I’m lousy with names until I actually see the person.”

The younger of the two, a guy in his late teens and wearing sagging pants, also smiling and shaking my hand, introduced himself as Jamaal.

“Well, since it’s still light out, let’s go over and give you an eyeball of the premises,” I said; “and then once you see that, you’ll figure out what to do.  And if you’re going to need anything, let me know.”

They followed us in their vehicle as I drove past the William Rivers Pitt, down the road, coming to where a gate used to be, driving through a thick band of trees, suddenly breaking through into a large meadow, Meyer and Alberto’s meadow.

“Man, this is great--this is beautiful--this is awesome,” George exulted; “so clean, so open, so spacious.

“Brother Lamond’s had camp meetings once a year for some years, and we’ve been in places all over the country, but this beats all.  It’s so clean, so open, so spacious.

“It’s what the entry into Heaven must look like.”

Well, I suggested, “it looks, uh, rather different in mid-winter, and then again in the heat of mid-summer.

“But right now, it’s okay.”

I walked them through another band of trees, to the side of the river.

After some more looking-around, I said, “Okay now, if you need anything, holler.  I’ll be here, and what’s mine’s yours.”

“I suppose we’ll set up a couple of tents for the night,” George said; “and then in the morning we’ll head to [the big city] to pick up the rented tank truck with potable water, and portable outhouses.”

“But how are you going to do that?” I asked.  “Two people, one car to go in, but then one car and two trucks to bring back.  You’re talking two trips.  And the place is open until nine; we can go and get them tonight.  You guys can each drive a truck, and I’ll drive my car, back.”

The four of us got into my car, and I drove back here, to drop off my guest.

But myself getting out too, I offered the keys to George.  “You’ll have to drive, because I want to listen.

“Due to circumstances beyond my control, I can’t drive and listen at the same time; I can only drive and talk, or just sit there and listen.

“And I want to hear all about Brother Lamont.”

“’Lamond,’” he corrected me; “’Lamond.’”

We barreled down the highway, George driving, I watching, and Jamaal in the back seat.

“So…..” I started; “this is going to be all new to me, something I haven’t seen before.  Tell me about camp meetings.  How many has your church had?”

“Oh, we’ve had them once a year for the past five years,” George said, “after Brother Lamond saw the light.

“He also saw that the old folks and the young ones needed a respite from the big dirty old city, a chance to go somewhere nice, uncrowded, clean; fresh air and water.  To have some fun, to hear a little preaching, to do some fellowshipping.”

I remembered something.  “Some of your brethren here, from the local Assembly of God church, are coming out for the fun and the preaching too, and they’re planning on throwing a big picnic for everybody, but I don’t know if that’s going to be on Friday or Saturday. 

“I’m supposed to let them know when the advance men--you guys--showed, and some of them’ll come out to make mutually-agreeable arrangements, and help set up.

“We don’t get many guests around here, and so you’re truly special.  You’re going to get the more-than-usual Nebraska hospitality and goodwill.  You’re going to have a great time.

“Now, tell me about the church.”

After which George and Jamaal illuminated me on the statistics; surely they were impressive, so much of God’s work done on so little resources.

As we neared the outskirts of the big city, I said, “Now, tell me about Lamond; not how he is now, but what he was like before.  I’ll see how he is now, tomorrow.  Give me the back-story.”

George and Jamaal carried on a short conversation, trying to decide how to begin.

Finally Jamaal started, “Well, there was Big Louie, the kingpin of crime, corruption, and murder in the inner city.  Big Louie was truly big, six and a half feet tall, maybe 400 pounds.  Always rode around in a chauffeured car with darkened windows.  Always wore a derby, a suit-jacket with wide lapels, and had diamonds embedded in his teeth.  A woman in each arm.  An armed bodyguard of at least six, all of them ex-Marines, ex-snipers.

“A monopoly on the drug, alcohol, firearms, gambling, and prostitution outlets.

“Built like a professional boxer, and a black belt in all the martial arts.

“A mean one, a bad one, he slit the throat of his own mother when he was eight, because she wouldn’t give him drug money.  He’s had some cops, a few, gunned down.  Nobody who crossed him was safe, from the neighborhood grocer who forgot to pay him protection money to the girl who cuckolded him to the chief of police who tried to nail him--”

“But that’s Big Louie,” I said; “what about Lamond?”

Well, Jamaal said, “Big Louie was scared to death of Lamond; crapped in his pants every time he had to deal with Lamond.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

The county sheriff dropped by later in the evening, just as the sun was going down, and we sat down on the front porch to talk.

“You don’t need to get involved,” he said, “but if possible, I’d like some help on this, as the alternative’s something I really don’t want to do, sending a harmless little old lady to the nuthouse in the big city.”

If I had ears, they would’ve perked up.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I got a lost and elderly female sitting in jail, from near Portland, Oregon.  Apparently she left home without asking her guardians, hopping on Amtrak from there to Omaha, and then came by bus up to [the big city], where she stood out on highway and thumbed a ride to here.

“The individual who picked her up thought there might be something addled about her, and brought her to me.  Because she’s what she is, I had to call to get a female deputy from the next county to come over, you know, for searching and stuff.  I got no women on my own staff.

“It’s costing the county ninety dollars, plus travel time and mileage.

“So…..she left home without getting permission of her guardians, and there was a nationally-distributed missing-persons bulletin issued.  I have her, and one of her relatives from Portland is boarding Amtrak there tonight, to get here and take her back home.  But of course he won’t get here for three, four, days yet.

“It was odd; I thought I was talking to one of her adult children, but it turned out an adult great-grandchild.”

Oh, it’s even odder than that, I assured him.

“She does a lot of incoherent babbling, but mentioned your name a few times, so I thought you might know something about her.”

Uh huh, I said; “I know of her, I know about her, but I don’t know her.”

“It’s been near ninety degrees here today, but she insisted upon keeping on the seven winter coats she was wearing, and stuffing ice cubes down inside her you-know-what.  She said it helps keep her cooler.

“Besides what she’s wearing, her luggage is nearly all…..pie tins.

“She’s got $1514 currency on her, and I thought there might be something behind that, but no; her guardian said it’s from sales she makes of junk on eBay, and that the money’s legitimate.

“But being an old woman, she shouldn’t be walking around with that money.

“There’s too many primitives running amok, taking other people’s money.

“Well, now that she’s identified and a guardian’s on his way, I got to find a safe place to put her until he arrives.  I can’t put her up in a motel in [the big city] because she’s not competent enough to be trusted to stay put.  The alternative’s to take her to the hospital there, and have them room-and-board her in their psychiatric unit for a few days.

“But that’s a lot of time and trouble, and the solution too much.  I was wondering if--”

Uh no, I interrupted, alarmed.  “No way in Hell.

“I’d be happy to put her up here, but she’s terrified of me.  It’s unwarranted, of course and obviously, but she’s scared of me.  I’m a nice guy; I have no intention of scaring a little old lady.”

At the same time, I remembered something.  “There’s good friends of hers who should be arriving sometime tomorrow morning, to camp here for a few days, and they’d probably take her in.  And besides that, as they’re leaving to go back to Oklahoma on Sunday, they could drop her off to her guardian when he arrives in Omaha, and he wouldn’t have to come up here at all, to get her.”

I gave the county sheriff the details, and contact information, for hippyhubby and hippywife.

“I’m sure her guardian would verify that they’re friends of hers, and that it’s safe for her to be with them.

“If you could keep her overnight in jail, it’d all work out, for all of us."

to be continued

[franksolich]

“The hippies are here, the hippies are here, the hippies are here,” happily announced the 11-year-old eager young lad, who was here with his father, the neighbor, earlier in the morning.  He grabbed his younger brother, the 4-year-old, and took him out to the back porch to see.

He lifted his lilliputian relative so he too could see, through the telescope that’s mounted on the railing of the back porch, looking out to the riverbank about 500 yards away.

The smaller boy looked, and started to cry, and so was put back down.

“Can I at least have my friends to come out and look?” the eager young lad asked me, already having been told that there’d be no public showing of the hippies like there had been last time, to which he, his sisters, and cousins had charged admission.

“No,” I said; “the state patrol’s got better things to do than to come out here and put up barriers to keep the crowds at bay.

“You’ll see a different sort of show over in Meyer and Alberto’s meadow, whatever time your mother chooses to take all of you, and it’d be more wholesome anyway; you’ve already seen the hippies in their natural state, and it’d be good for you to see something else that’s new and different.”

Just as the neighbor and his two sons were leaving to work, the neighbor’s older brother came, to pick up a piece of welding equipment.  He came out to the back porch to look too.

Spying the shapeless muu-muu-wearing Mrs. Alfred Packer walking among lines of clothing hung out to dry, he noticed how grey, drab, and disconsolate she seemed.

“That’s one Hell of an unhappy woman,” he commented. 

“It’s very easy to figure out,” I said; “hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer came from a large close loving family, decent, modest hardworking folks.

“But then she got too proud.

“When she was a teenager, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, she and Johnny were an article; Johnny was handsome, well-mannered, clean, bright, and all that. 

“But all Johnny wanted was to get a job in the tire factory, marry the woman he loved, set her up in a nice bungalow somewhere in a good part of Cleveland, and fill it with children.

“Mrs. Alfred Packer was coming of age about the time the women’s libbers began their ascent, and decided she wanted to be ‘more’ than a wife and mother--as if that‘s a trivial, meaningless thing to be.

“So rather than marrying Johnny and settling down, she became a ‘career woman,’ selling stuff.  I’m not sure what it was she sold, but it, speculatively, sounds as if office equipment and supplies to retailers of those goods.

“Something like that.

“She did pretty good at it, but in the meantime didn’t hook a guy.

“When she was in her late 30s, she suddenly got desperate; she was getting old, and didn’t want to be alone.

“The problem being, all the good men were taken, and there wasn’t anybody available until she ‘met’ Wild Bill on the internet.  She had this silly romantic fantasy of the ’free,’ easy, loose, and hedonistic life-style of the long-ago hippies, and he promised that to her, and more.

“He promised her they were going to live as Abe and Mary in a log cabin, or Joe and Sadie in a sod house, in the old days, a simpler sort of life.

“Well, hippyhubby did give her that, although it wasn’t anything near what she’d dreamed it’d be.

“In the meantime, Johnny back up in Ohio had married another woman, bought a nice house, and settled down in his job at the local tire factory.  They were active in their church, in their neighborhood, in their extended family, and had six kids, only one of whom turned out bad.

“One of them ended up a physician, another a dentist; two registered nurses, and a bank vice-president.

“The black sheep’s in the Ohio state penitentiary right now, a former Democrat state senator convicted of corruption, but five out of six isn’t bad.

“Johnny’s about ready to retire on a good pension from the tire factory, and all the kids who’ve done well banded together to buy him and their mother a winter home in Palm Beach, Florida.

“hippywife could’ve had all this, but no, it wasn’t good enough for her.”

Then I commented I supposed I’d go down to see them about noon, after they got settled in more, to see if they needed anything.

“Be careful,” the neighbor’s older brother said; “you’ll be alone out here, and remember hippyhubby Wild Bill has it in for you.”

Yeah, I said.

to be continued

[franksolich]

It wasn’t until past one in the afternoon that I headed down to the river-bank to greet the guests from northeastern Oklahoma.  That was probably a mistake, as the sun was directly overhead, and despite that it was “only” 86 degrees, if AccuWeather had an accurate thermometer, it would’ve shown 112 degrees, probably.

There were several people hanging around, but as I got closer, nearly all of them scurried to hide in tents or in the converted Snap-On Tool van with WILD BILL & BROS. WHOLESALE UNDERTAKERS DISCOUNT FOR QUANTITY painted in semi-circle on two sides of it.

Only hippyhubby Wild Bill and their guest from Oregon remained out in the open, sitting at a picnic table.  I wasn’t sure what it was about, but it appeared Wild Bill was trying to persuade her to do something, and she wasn’t biting.

“Look,” I saw hippyhubby say when I got to the table, “you got $1514, but in ones, fives, tens, and twenties, and nearly all of it wrinkled, crumbled up, even dirty.  And it’s probably a pain for you to count it, the way it’s all messed up.

“I’ll give you 151 nice new clean $10-bills for the lot, and it’ll be easier for you to count it.”

“But that’ll short me four dollars,” she said.

“Okay, okay,” Wild Bill said; “I’m a nice guy.  I’ll give you 152 nice new clean $10-bills for the lot, and you’ll have a profit of six bucks.”

Ahem, I said, interrupting; “Excuse me a minute, but I’m your host.”

hippyhubby of course recognized me from past visits, as did nearly all the other heads peeking out from canvas or the nearly-shut back door of the van.

“I came down from the house to see if you needed anything.”

No, replied Wild Bill; they had all that they needed, and so I could go away now.

I’ve dealt with that sort of thing before; because of my manner, many times someone thinks I’m not important, I don’t count, and so can be safely ignored or even shoved away.

Sometimes they’ve been right; I haven’t been someone to whom they needed to pay attention--but those other times when they’ve been wrong, it’s proven a powerful lesson to people who jump to conclusions too quickly.

“I see you brought a boat this time,” I said, looking around.

Yeah, hippyhubby said; “I hope to do a little fishing.  The boat’s got holes all over on the bottom, but I guess I can plug them up well enough to make the boat usable here.”

This somewhat disconcerted me; the old time camp meeting was around the bend of the river, and as long as the Packer clan had to walk around, given the distance, it’d been unlikely they would’ve ever come across it.  But if Wild Bill was going to be floating down the river, that was a different matter.

The old woman, oddly attired in this heat in several layers of winter coats and a scarf covering her head, got up from the table and walked to one of the tents in which hippywife was hiding, peering out.

I then sat down at the table.  Wild Bill looked at me.

“Your friend, that guy you’re always with, is he around?”

No, I said; “he’s not around right now,” omitting to mention he wasn’t going to be around at all this weekend, as he’s down in Tulsa attending a horse show and sale.

“For now, it’s just me.”

Seeing that I showed no impulse to leave, Wild Bill started honing some cadaver-carvers that had been laying on the seat beside him, squish-squirring them against the oiled stone to sharpen them.

“Those are some really unusual knives,” I said; “I’ve never seen knives like that before.  And so big too.”

“I got them at an auction of surplus county property,” he explained; “the county coroner’s office.”

“You could probably butcher a bison with those,” I pointed out; “or even a human.”

“I guess one could,” commented hippyhubby, who suddenly seemed to think of something.

Picking up two of them and crossing their blades into a large “x,” he clattered them right in my face, just inches away from my eyes.

I yawned; this wasn‘t anything with which I hadn‘t had to deal before.

to be continued

 

[franksolich]

“That didn’t bother you, having knives flashed right in front of your face?” my guest asked around suppertime, after she’d returned from the big city.  “That didn’t bother you?”

No, I said; “of course, it bothered a little bit, but not enough to make me flinch.

“Remember the Law of Sudden Unexpected Unpleasant Surprises, that has the deaf in a cold iron-clad grip.  Hearing people usually have an awareness of something before it hits them; we, not hearing sounds to give us a clue, have not the slightest idea until it’s hit us and done its damage.

“I’ve never liked it, constantly in daily life having to deal with sudden unexpected unpleasant surprises, but by now, I’ve been long ago used to it.

“You know, you hearing people over-rate vision--what you see--and grossly underestimate the importance of what you hear, in your reactions to things.

“I saw the knives, but I didn’t hear them clash together.

“If it’d been you, you probably would’ve started, and fallen backward, out of fright. A good thing.

“Because besides seeing the sight, you would’ve heard the sound, too.

“Hearing’s the best self-defense mechanism, warning of peril or danger, there is.

“If one’s merely looking at something, it excites no emotional reaction.”

I was going to expand on that, but then we saw two big old yellow school buses slowly rumbling on the road on the other side of the William Rivers Pitt, headed towards Meyer and Alberto’s meadow.

“The camp meeting’s here,” I said, “but I wonder why there’s two buses instead of three.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

My visitor and I got into her motor vehicle and drove over to Meyer and Alberto’s meadow, to greet my guests.  The two buses were disgorging what seemed overloads of people when we got there.

I sought out either George or Jamaal, the ones I knew, so as to be told what was going on.

The teenager Jamaal was busy gently and carefully helping an ancient woman down the steps of the bus and into a wheelchair.  George was shaking hands with the more ambulatory brethren as they disembarked, and so I went to him instead.

“What’s going on,” I asked; “where’s the third bus?  Where’s Reverend Lamond?”

I was advised that the third bus--actually the lead bus, driven by Reverend Lamond himself--had gotten a flat tire outside of Sioux City, Iowa, and as bus tires aren’t standard tire-shop inventory, it was taking a while to get a new one.  So as to not hold others up, the trailer had been detached from that bus and hooked onto another one, and some in the first bus had been jammed into the second and third buses.

But there were still about twenty, including Reverend Lamond, cooling their heels in Sioux City. 

They were however expected to be along as soon as a new tire had been installed.

I looked at the crowd, all this citizenry of Detroit.  The children were aimlessly running around, never having seen a meadow before.  The old folks were led to seats--wheelchairs, chairs, benches--in the shade of the trees.  If one needed to attend to a certain something, he or she was gently escorted to one of the wheeled outhouses discreetly placed in inobtrusive locations.

About a third of the crowd seemed to be femmes, ranging from 60 years of age down to 20, modestly dressed in ways that accentuated their aesthetics.  As George introduced them to me, or as I was pointed out, many of them embraced or hugged me. 

What was disappointing was the lack of able-bodied males, say from 20 to 60 years of age, that group most likely to support and sustain the others.  There were some, and there were teenagers such as Jamaal, but not many.

Mostly small children, women, and the elderly and infirm.

As the buses were unloaded, a contingent of their local brethren came in from town; about a dozen, half men, half women, sturdy hardworking sons of the soil and daughters of the Plains.  The men pitched in to set up the tents and get the old folks comfortable (it was a very hot, sunny day), while the women got together with their counterparts from Michigan, to discuss the big pot-luck picnic to be held on the morrow.

As the sun began setting, I pulled my visitor aside, confiding in her.

“I got a problem.  Reverend Lamond’s not here yet, and I’ve got to get back to the house so as to keep my eyes on the Packer clan.  I have a sense mischief’s brewing, and I need to be there to put a lid on it.”

She agreed it was a problem.  “You can go back; I’ll stay here and meet Reverend Lamond for you.”

We explained the situation to George, who was apparently the number-two man in the whole operation, and while he was disappointed, he understood.  “Brother Lamond‘s going to be bothered, because he thinks the world of you, and wants to meet you.

“But you’ll be here Saturday evening, right, for the mass baptism?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” I said.

to be continued

 

[franksolich]

Even though it’s something like a mile, it was cool enough that I walked back here, leaving her car with my visitor, who stayed at the camp meeting, to use.  It was a nice night for walking.

When I got back, I watered the cats and had coffee and cigarettes out on the back porch, without benefit of light.  No need to, as the moon and the Packer clan’s big campfire down on the side of the river provided enough illumination to show what they were doing.

Suddenly an apparition, which I hadn’t heard coming, popped up in front of my face, inches away.

It was one of Wild Bill’s brothers, the one with both eyes on the same side of his nose.

I relaxed.  “Greetings,” I said; “what brings you here this time of the night?”

“Wild Bill sent me up here to see if I could steal anything,” he said.

I’m familiar with this brother of hippyhubby’s, who’s not very bright and hence honest.

“Well, there’s a bag of onions in the refrigerator,” I said; “maybe you could steal that?”

As it was difficult to “hear”--see and read--him in the darkness, I lit the kerosene lamp on the table, and the two of us huddled near its faint light, he on one side and I on the other.

“Is your friend around?” the brother asked; “the one that’s franksolich?”

“No,” I said; “he’s not,” again neglecting to admit that the business partner’s down in Tulsa this weekend, looking at and buying horses.

“Well, you have to warn him; Wild Bill’s determined to get him this time, and what hippyhubby wants, he usually gets.”

“You know,” I said, “I’m curious.  What makes hippyhubby think that’s franksolich, the guy he thinks is franksolich?”

“He says he figured it all out on Labor Day, three years ago.  Both of you’d been pointed out as one of you being franksolich, and Wild Bill decided that the one that was franksolich, was franksolich.

“’The tall one, he’s dumber than a bag of rocks--it’s a miracle he’s smart enough to crawl out of bed in the morning.’

“He’s sure of it.”

Hmmm, I said; “And all this because he thinks franksolich stalked hippywife?”

“Oh, he’s definitely sure of that; he insists franksolich knows so much about hippywife and her family that he had to be stalking her, up close and personal.

“Some of us think that while that could be the case, it might not be the case.  hippywife talks a lot, and he could’ve picked up all that he knows about her--which is a lot--just by reading her comments in the cooking and baking forum.

“Wild Bill’s pretty possessive of hippywife, even any of us, if we dare look at her too long, he beats us up pretty good.

“Wild Bill thinks that since franksolich got this close to hippywife, he’s probably seen her naked too, in the bath or something, and he thinks that only he should see her that way, and if any other man dares lust for her, he has to die.”

Oh my, I replied.

to be continued