The Hunting Trip (36 page)
Authors: III William E. Butterworth
After thinking it over, Phil sent essentially the same letter to his Aunt Grace, enclosing similar photographs. The first reply came three weeks later, the day Franz Josef became the first pre-kindergarten
student in the history of the Organic School to be expelled. What he had done, in a skit on the grass, in which he and fellow prekindergartner Teresa-Ann Fogarty were supposed to skip onto the “stage” costumed (draped in brown cloth) as mushrooms, was to pour a gallon of gray paint over his costar and himself (he said that while he had never seen brown mushrooms he had seen a lot of gray
Agaricus bisporus
) to improve the costuming.
When Franz Josef and Teresa-Ann skipped onto the stage, dripping gray paint at every skip, his costar's mother screamed and then assaulted the skit's directoress, twenty-two-year-old Miss Penelope Greene, with the umbrella under which she had been protecting her complexion from the harmful rays of the sun.
Miss Greene then fainted, necessitating the calling of the Goodhope Volunteer Ambulance Service. These first responders responded with alacrity, and soon both dancers, the girl dancer's mother, and Miss Greene were on their way to the emergency room of Richards Hospital, which serves Goodhope.
Since there was no room in the Goodhope Volunteer Ambulance Service ambulance for Phil, he had to follow in his Jaguar, which caused him to arrive at Richards Hospital perhaps five minutes after the others.
When he entered the emergency room, he found Mrs. Helena Fogarty demanding of the medical staff that they remove the gray paint from Teresa-Ann immediately, rather than simultaneously from Teresa-Ann and Franz Josef, whom she described at the top of her lungs as “that
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five-year-old
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monster!”
“Madam,” Phil said politely, “please refrain from calling my Franz Josef a
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monster.”
At that point, Mr. Terence Fogarty, Teresa-Ann's father, who had been known as “Terrible Terry” when he had been a 320-pound All-American tackle at Ole Miss, entered the conversation.
“My wife can call that
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monster of yours anything she pleases, you
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,” Mr. Fogarty said. And then, to emphasize his point, he grabbed Phil by the neck and lifted him off the ground.
This was a mistake on his part, Mr. Fogarty soon learned.
Phil, in a Pavlovian reaction, brought into play some of the wide variety of kicks and fist and elbow strikes of Taekkyeon that he had learned at the Royal Korean Archery & Taekkyeon Academy on Dried Fish Street in London and never forgotten.
Mr. “Terrible Terry” Fogarty instantly found himself begging for mercy as he lay on the ground, on his back, with Phil's foot on his groin area.
Phil thought that would be the end of itâor would be the end of it, once the emergency room staff had finished shaving the heads of Teresa-Ann and Franz Josefâbut he was wrong.
The very next day, Mr. Dyson Samuels, president of the Second National Bank of Goodhope and also of the board of directors of the Marietta Fieldstone School of Organic Education, called upon Mr. and Madame Williams and said that at the emergency meeting of the board held the previous evening, Phil had been elected to the board, and that if he accepted, Franz Josef would be allowed back into the school.
Phil was trying hard to think of a way he could decline the honor and at the same time have Franz Josef's expulsion forgiven when Madame Brunhilde saved him the effort.
“Deal,” she said. “Say âthank you,' Phil.”
And so Phil joined the board.
When he went to his first board meeting, Mr. Samuels took him aside and explained the board's reasons and what Phil's role on the board would be.
“We have a little problem, Mr. Williams,” Banker Samuels said.
“It has plagued us for years, but has now reached something of a pinnacle, problem-wise. It deals with the attire in which our teenaged young lady students come to school to take advantage of all the educational benefits the Marietta Fieldstone School of Organic Education has to offer.”
“And what is that?”
“Don't interrupt me. Bankers who loan people money don't expect to be interrupted. All they expect to hear from people like you is âYes, sir' and âThank you.'”
“Sorry.”
“Teresa-Ann, over whom your son Franz Josef poured the gray paint, has an older sister, Barbara-Sue, who is sixteen. Others of our young ladies look up to Barbara-Sue as a role model.”
“That's nice.”
“It would be if Barbara-Sue was not in the habit of coming to school each morning dressed and made up as if she's on her way to work as a hooker. By which I mean in a short skirt exposing much of her
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, topped by a T-shirt which (a) appears molded to her bosom and (b) on which is emblazoned such witticisms as â
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teachers' and a picture of a rooster over the legend “
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Inspector' and things of that sort.
“And because, as I said, Barbara-Sue is a role model to her peers, we have in the morning a parade of our young ladies which the casual observer would think was a parade of hookers marching to work in an economy-class brothel. This has the to-be-expected result of inflaming the hormones of our young gentleman students, to the detriment of their thinking about calculus and Modern European History, and turning it toward carnal congress outside the boundaries of holy matrimony. You taking my meaning?”
“Yes, sir. May I ask why you don't have a word with Mrs. Fogarty about proper school attire for her daughter?”
“We have tried that. The last three times we tried to do that, Mrs. Fogarty said unkind things about the three gentlemen we sent in such a loud voice that it woke Terrible Terry up, whereupon he went to his front door, grabbed our board members by their collars, and threw them off the Fogarty porch and into the shrubbery.”
“I think I suspect where this is going,” Phil said.
“We thought perhaps, in view of the manner in which you set Mr. Fogarty on his
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in the emergency room yesterday . . .”
“I'll have a word with him, if that is what you're asking.”
“That is what I'm asking. And so far as your other duties as a board member are concerned, don't worry about them. All you have to do is join the chorus of âYes, sirs' when I finish telling the board what they have just decided to do.”
“I understand.”
Phil served on the board until Franz Josef graduated, at which time Madame Brunhilde gave him permission to resign. During his reign, so to speak, the young ladies of the Marietta Fieldstone School of Organic Education came to school looking like happy, modestly dressed schoolgirls, as the fathers of the girls had heard and believed what Mr. Williams had done to Terrible Terry Fogarty in the emergency room of Richards Hospital and decided they would rather face the wrath of their wives and daughters than that of Mr. Williams.
As previously stated, the first reply to Phil's letters to his mother and his Aunt Grace came three weeks later, the day Franz Josef became the first pre-kindergarten student in the history of the Organic School to be expelled.
Curiously, it was from his stepfather:
Dear Philip,
I am responding to your letter of recent date to your mother because she is undergoing psychiatric treatment under my psychiatric direction at the Seton Hall Psychiatric Institute here in South Orange and cannot do so herself.
Not only are patients at the SHPI denied for their own protection the use of sharp instruments, such as pencils, but your mother is not in a condition to use a pencil even if she was allowed to have one. In layman's terms, she is completely bonkers, and her prognosis is not good. In other words, she's not going to get any better.
In these circumstances, the Hippocratic Oath I took when I became a doctor of medicine so long ago, which included the phrase
Primum non nocere
, which in layman's terms means “First do no harm,” obviously precludes my showing her your letter, which if she could read it, and she's in no condition to read it, would push her even further across that line which separates the sane from the loony tunes.
She was always worried that you would marry some foreigner and contribute to the further degeneration of the gene pool by breeding, which the photograph you sent of those ugly children clearly demonstrates you have indeed done.
The kindest thing for you to do is stay out of what's left of her life.
Under these circumstances, I'm sure you will understand that I have to withdraw my previous offer to provide you pro bono psychiatric services, even though you obviously need whatever psychiatric help you can get.
Insofar as your late father's golf clubs are concerned: When I tried to turn them in on a better set, the Pro Shop at Baltusrol Country Club seized them because your father had not paid for them when he purchased them from the Winged Foot Country Club and they had apparently shared that information with Baltusrol.
With all best wishes, your stepfather,
KM
Keyes Michaels, M.D.
The second reply came three days after the first:
MISS GRACE ALICE PATRICIA HORTENSE WILLIAMS
MAYFLOWER-WILLIAMS HOUSE
BACK BAY, BOSTON, MASS.
Dear Nephew Philip:
Frankly, I always worried that when you married you would follow in the footsteps of your late fatherâmy late brotherâand take to wife someone whose position in life was below the salt, as he did.
I never in my wildest nightmares, however, dreamed that you would take to wife someone who is not only below the salt, but also below the pepper, the A.1. sauce, the Worcestershire sauce, and the Tabasco sauce as well.
I suppose it's futile of me to suggest that you should legally change your name, but I don't think it unreasonable of me to ask that you stay as far south of the Mason-Dixon Line as possible. Forever.
In case you have been fantasizing vis-Ã -vis inheriting any of the Williams family money, please be advised that on my demise all of my worldly possessions, in other words, every last Buffalo nickel, will go to the fund for the preservation of the Mayflower-Williams House.
Sincerely,
Grace Alice Patricia Hortense Williams (Miss)
[ THREE ]
P
hil of course made other friends in the years that passed as the water flowed under the Muddiebay Bay Causeway and ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico.
One of the oldest of these was Bobby “Fender” Bender, proprietor of the Foggy Point Garage & Good As New Used Parts, whom he met while still residing in the Grand Hotel, in other words, before Brunhilde was Madame Brunhilde and before Brunhilde had bought the house on Creek Drive.
Phil had gone to Mr. Bender's place of business to have the oil changed in the Jaguar, which had driven all those miles from Fort Benning. He would have preferred to take the car to a Jaguar dealer, but the list of “Your Neighborhood Jaguar Dealers” that came with the car listed the nearest dealer to Foggy Point, Mississippi, as being in New Orleans, Louisiana, which the map showed was a long
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way to go to have the oil in one's Jaguar replaced.
Mr. Bender's place of business was on a dirt road about three miles inland from Foggy Point. It was located inside a barn, or shed, that had seen better days. It was advertised by a welcoming sign mounted over an ancient fire truck:
FOGGY POINT GARAGE & GOOD AS NEW USED PARTS
NO SOLICITING
SALESMEN WILL BE SHOT
NO TRESPASSING
When Mr. Bender came out of the barn, he was wearing a soup-strainer mustache, blue denim overalls, no shirt or undershirt, and an old pair of Army combat boots.
“What?” Mr. Bender greeted Phil.
“I was hoping to have the oil in my Jaguar changed.”
“I don't like Yankees and I hate
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foreign cars.”
“Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Sorry to have troubled you.”
“Wait a minute. Maybe we can work something out. What are those cartons in the backseat?”
“Shotgun shells. Specifically Winchester AA 12-gauge shotgun shells containing 1â
-ounce #9 Shot.”
“That's what people shoot at coffee saucers, or whatever the
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they're called, for fun, right?”
“That is correct, Mr. Bender. They are called âclay pigeons.'”
“They look like coffee saucers for midgets. But I got a buddy who does that off his pier,” Mr. Bender explained. “You want to swap, say, ten boxes of them for an oil change and a lube job?”
“I would be delighted to do so.”
“Okay, when I open the door, drive that ugly
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Jag-You-Are inside.”
“Yes, sir.”
The barn door creaked open. Phil drove into the barn and found himself next to a Maserati convertible, and with his bumper against the doors of a Lincoln and a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost sedan. Elsewhere in the barn was what looked like half a million dollars' worth of the very latest service equipment, a half-dozen luxury cars of assorted makes, and three motorcycles in various stages of disassembly.
“Nice cars,” Phil said as he got out of the Jaguar.
“The Italian Special there,” Mr. Bender explained, “which is a
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nightmare to keep running, belongs to my pal Junior, the one I told you shoots at those midget coffee saucers off his
pier. The Lincoln belongs to his mother, who is a great lady. The Rolls-Royce, which is a
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nightmare in
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spades to keep running, belongs to the Grand Hotel, which is owned by my buddy's father, who is married to my buddy's mother.”
“I see.”
“Well, let's get your
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Limey Special in the air, drain the
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oil out of the ugly
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, and see what the
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else is wrong with it. Because there's always something wrong with a Jag-You-Are, if you can get them to run. Lucas Electronics isn't called the Prince of Darkness for nothing.”