03/08/01

I worked up the nerve this morning to ask Percy about his former roommate Gary. He said he had a falling out with him after Gary cut him from his cricket team. I told Percy I would give someone thanks for that, but apparently he was in no mood to deal with my humor. Yeah, hit a real nerve there.

I spent months learning that frickin game for that lame brain! Percy protests, once the warmer weather hits I’m going to get Dr. Hardik and your relative Fauntleroy and their cricket-playing friends together with my own team and I’m going to crush that lame brain!

Lame brain. It was also weird hearing Percy characterize Fauntleroy as my relative. I had to think about it until I could see it that way. Funny, I’m also starting to see how Percy’s Mythopoetic Men’s Group may be code for: Percy’s diabolical plan for revenge on Gary, the Lame Brain.

Percy then asks me if I had any money to help out with groceries. I stammered for a few seconds said I’d get him some money by the end of the day. Next thing I know Phebe’s on the phone saying she’s been cleared by the police, hounding me to come home. And then Cupcake’s at the door asking me to go back to the mountains with her to work on her Winnebago. Suddenly I start to wonder whether I might be better off like the man known as the Wandering Leatherman who lived across the river in the 1800‘s. According to Percy’s book they say he was a Frenchman who had his heart broken badly, became a hermit, hardly spoke, was always on the move. He was so named because he wore a stiff, homemade suit of leather year round. He traveled a 365 mile circuitous route between the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers throughout the year so he was never much of a burden to anyone for long as he relied on begging for survival. He showed up like clockwork at the same towns on the same day each year. If he was treated badly somewhere, he changed his route and would not return there, found a new rock shelter at another spot.

So I went to the farm, got my overalls from the barn---spared any more of Percy’s borrowed clothes from getting ruined---took a couple of loads of scrap metal to Middletown in the truck. All the money went into Percy’s hands or into the gas tank.

Now Cupcake is offering now to pay me $500 to get her camper running again. It won’t be an easy task getting that thing on the road, but I think I’m gonna have to take the job simply for the money.

Percy let Phebe in while I was asleep just before . She woke me up and said she needed to change my bandages. She was plenty miffed, said if you keep letting that little vixen next door doctor you, you’ll end up with gangrene.

I said, maybe I’ll have gangrene as my goal for St. Patrick’s Day.