When Roberta moved to Webster Groves, she loaded Bart and me into her car. I battled depression over having to move away from my beloved sons, Chicago and Quine. Bart made matters worse by yet again telling me they were Walt’s sons. But why would Fielding lie to me? Who has ever heard of a woman making lying paternity claims when no money is at stake? Bart shook her head. Fielding told me not to worry about it. I wish she hadn’t topped that with a paean to Walt’s beauty and virility. To me, it undercut the sincerity of her reassurances.
Fielding and her boys stayed with mike. They had to make more trips to Webster because mike proposed (without their consent, I might add) to shuttle them to Webster Groves on the weekends. Chicago and Quine fought so hard against weekly trips that mike figured out fast that taking them once a week would be the end of his arms and fingers. So, I missed my boys even more; Bart not so much.
Bart disliked Quine. He was a nervous guy whose hyperactivity wore on Bart’s always slender reserves of tolerance. She also disliked his pretension. Quine insisted that, prior to Chaucer’s death, owing to his precocity, Chaucer have him dharma transmission. According to Quine, his profound grasp of Chaucey’s teaching of universal predation underwrote his transmission to teach. Nevertheless, when Quine preached his predation doctrines around Bart, he had to do so at a distance. If he didn’t, he had a short wait before he got a blow on the head.
You might be wondering what Bart and I thought of the first trip to Webster Groves. There’s nothing to remember. Like many cats, we adored sleeping through road trips. Trips without memory are the kitty way. Bart, being paranoid, would wait long enough before dozing off to verify that we weren’t headed to a vet. Although I had personal experience of modern medicine (recall my joy when I could pee again), Bart was a medical nihilist. She viewed vets as about as trustworthy as a coyote. She waged war on vets and their so-called science.
Once we arrived in Webster Groves, Roberta’s flat in Webster disappointed us. It was small. We were used to more room. Worse still, we enviously recalled that Chaucer had a palace in Vienna, Virginia, where he had a catnip plantation in the garden. He viewed it as his personal stash. The existence of his Vienna estate made it all too clear to me that I was being gypped. Chaucey got a palace. Bart and I got a 1-room flat. At least the flat had a balcony, albeit one that overlooked a parking lot. What had the architect of this disaster in Webster been thinking? Still, a man must learn to accommodate to himself to what is, not to what should be.
I discovered too that Wolverine reached a level of happiness that no normal person could attain without drugs when I told him of the move to Webster. “You’ve reached the antechamber of NGA,” he purred. He went on to talk about how convenient it would be. He couldn’t wait to tell Peregrine the good news. I admit I also felt glad that my being away from Saint Robert would get Wolverine to stop pestering me every other day to “borrow” mike’s Common Access Card or CAC. He always promised he would return it. I didn’t trust him with it. Besides, mike treated his CAC as if it were part of his body. I never did figure out what clearances mike might have. Mike’s a secret monger.
Even though Bart and I had doubts about the flat, Roberta didn’t mind it but promised us that as she learned more about Saint Lous and its suburbs, we’d move to a house at an auspicious moment. Bart tried to get her to promise a house without Fielding and her kids. Ominously, Roberta reused that promise. I felt glad about that. I love my sons.
I am distracted by the stories flooding the news on the leak of Justice Alito’s decision that, if the unlovable Alito keeps his support, will overturn Roe. With my abortion rights at risk, I spoke to Bart about obtaining an abortion. She called me an idiot, as did Fielding. “You’re not preggo, Crocky. And, being a Tom, you’re not ever going to get knocked up.” I protested that she was making a prediction. She is no seer. Who knows what the future holds? And why couldn’t I take that pill to get a sense of what an abortion, if I ever become pregnant, would be like? Bart and Fielding rolled their eyes. “Our education system has failed him,” they chimed. But I had read radical feminist papers on the future happy day when men could carry to term. Anything and everything are possible. If not in the past, then now. If not now, then in the future. If not in the future, then in the timelessness of kitty heaven.”
Still, Tony Alito’s draft bothered me. I diskliked it, even though Tony is a dear friend. I couldn’t help wondering how many guys would wind up involuntary fathers if he had his way. Maybe “involuntary” is the wrong word since most guys plunge with alacrity into coitus without women forcing them, but “nonvoluntary” must count as the truth about unaborted kids. It wouldn’t be so bad if a child’s paternity was beyond proof. Alas, Watson and Crick’s discovery of the double helix ruined that. Man-haters got together in no time to develop reliable paternity tests based on the DNA of putative fathers. Denials of fatherhood have become impossible to pull off. And the result? Cis-women shaking down guys to pay for the rearing of their bastard sons and daughters. My friend Tony had concocted a recipe for conscripting men into public fatherhood. I weep to consider what Tony’s mad ideas would do to a struggling guy’s pocketbook. Tony had created the premise for the best argument ever developed for boys running with Trans-, rather than Cis, girls. Of course, in the heat of the moment, guys are wont to forget the risks of dating fecund Cis-women. Tony ignored all of that in his opinion. Instead, he would allow the dragooning of women into motherhood and in the future would do the same to pregnant men. He may not think about these deep topics, but I do.
As I explained my deep thinking to Bart, her fury mounted. She got so incensed she again beat me up. “Where do you get these insane ideas? What have they to do with cats? Have you ever met a trans- Tom or Molly? Cats are all Cis-gender and will always be Cis. You’re thinking about this like a human, you imbecile? When I invited her to entertain the idea that trans- Mollies and Toms are so convincing in their look that they are indistinguishable from Cis-gendered kitties, Fielding beat me up.” Neither she nor Bart ever had patience with philosophers.
I did think there was an irony in Tony’s thinking. Tony told me he never thought a mother or father had a duty to donate so much as a pint of blood to save their own flesh and blood. He had never argued for forcing a parent to donate a kidney to save a dying child. It was only if the child was literally a parasite in the womb that Tony wanted to keep the mother and child union intact. Anyway, I began to think this opinion could only have been written under the direction of Tony’s latest crush, her Majesty Amy. Trust me. He will deny it. Tony always preferred a woman that could carry no cargo or was setting sail with full ballast. He had made occasional exceptions for his wife. Nobody knows if Tony will succeed in imposing his view of abortion on Americans. Can he keep a 5-4 majority? He does not have such a gift for friendship that I would bet my life on it. At least I’ve now unburdened myself to you, gentle reader, and am ready to talk about living in Webster Groves.
As I made my way back home and thought about Wolverine’s wants, none of what he wanted was surprising. He had passed me a folder with photographs of attendees at his soiree. The photographs included names, brief bios, and pertinent career information. The photos included high-ranking military officers, senior defense contractors, intelligence officers, especially from the NGA, and politicians. He asked me to guard the folders like a precious secret. He added he might have ideas in the future for stories on these folks. The public might, he conjectured, one day like to know the kind of parties its bigwigs attended. Wolverine could barely conceal his delight at having so many people enrolled in his book of eligibles to blackmail.
Despite the bar soiree having so much business-chat built into it, Wolverine, Tucker, and I had a good visit. Tucker still had occasional moments where he was not in the grip of right-think dogmatisms. I still preferred his company to a feminist coven. Tucker had yet to conclude that the Clintons and their minions were pedophiles running a kiddy prostitution operation out of a pizza parlour in downtown DC. His refreshing skepticism about some looney hypotheses back then made him easier to talk to and snarled less. He was still wearing, as I’ve mentioned, bow ties. I liked it. He sometimes reminded me of George Will.
If you spent half hours with Tucker, you did have to endure his boring sermons on how other people should live, but he was sometimes hilarious, often without knowing it. Wolverine, Tucker, and I all got to know each other better that evening. After all, there are limits to how well you get to know somebody from online chess or chatting on Skype. For example, I had no idea that Wolverine had known Chaucer. They had first met as guests at Windsor Castle. Some of the royals, perhaps the Queen Mother, could not get enough of them. Wolverine also loosened up after a few Campari. At his inebriated best, Wolverine was a delightful raconteur.
When I, at last, got back home, I made a surreptitious entry. Once in, I rounded a corner to head into the kitchen. Rather than the scent of tuna, I felt a bolt of pain shooting into my head. Bart sucker-punched me as I rounded the corner. I took a right paw and then left to the nose. She carried on about her eunuch (that would be me) daring to come home stinking of amaretto and cream. She calmed herself by beating me up, then evicted me from the kitchen without tuna. I imagined I had escaped to a happier place. I was wrong. Fielding beat me up as soon as I entered the living room. She resented me going for a ramble without her. If she enjoyed anything in the world, it was a good walkabout. I escaped her clutches, but I didn’t get to a happier place until I crawled into the bottom of my bed. In the bed, I set myself up at Roberta’s feet. Her body’s heat warmed me. She muttered I was a good kitty and fell back to sleep. Tell me you’re not jealous of my having a servant like that. If anything is admirable in a servant, it is gullibility. She never figured out I had been out. Perhaps mike didn’t notice either, but I suspect he didn’t care one way or the other.
When I woke up in the morning, I discovered irritating news. Roberta had no prospects of a job at Fort Leonard Wood that paid the vast sum she viewed herself as worth. As I think I’ve mentioned, she had set herself up with an associate dean’s gig in Saint Louis. She had decided to let a flat in Webster Groves until she knew Saint Louis and its environs well enough to buy a house. Then I heard more news worth knowing. She was going to take Bart and me with her. Fielding and my boys would stay in Saint Robert with mike. They would travel with mike on weekends to visit us. I was unsure whether I liked this arrangement. I hated the impertinence of my servants making these decisions with my input. And why wouldn’t be mad. First off, Fielding and the kids would be living in a much larger place than I would be. That seemed clearly wrong. Second, neither Roberta nor mike knew how long the arrangement would last. Time would tell. I was sure, too, that neither Chicago nor Quine would approve of weekly travel. Quine in particular detested car trips. Look at the picture above. You an see what a nervous Nelly he is.
After I sneaked from the house to Waynesville without alerting my servants, I discovered the “bar” where Wolverine and Snarlson had installed themselves in a comfortable room at city hall, a building that was on the north side of a section of old Route 66 that passed through Waynesville. Wolverine was smoking a Sherman cigarillo and wearing a bespoke suit and his coke hat, whilst clean-living Snarlson was enjoying a martini and had declined invites to smoke. To my astonished eyes, Wolverine had turned this civic office into a scene from Petronius’s Satyricon. Naked young men and women were carrying drinks, cigarettes, foodstuffs, and other goodies. People I did not know wandered booze-buzzed about the room. I noticed that everybody was using the naked staff’s bodies as their napkins. Greasy, dirtied fingers got wiped off on the young, naked giggling bodies. It made a Pasolini or Fellini movie look staid.
A naked boy asked me what I wanted to drink. I asked for an amaretto and cream that was extra heavy on the cream. When I asked Wolverine about the naked waiters and waitresses, he had a ready answer. The funder of the event thought it best if we ran it so that nobody sane would ever wish to admit that he had attended. Nor would they be glad guests, I guessed, if the funder had photographic evidence of it, as more than a few of the guests looked rather like senior officers. I asked Wolverine how he explained this debauched soiree to the guests. “Please, Crockett, I tell them that Etonians are trained in the classics. These doings help us feel at home wherever we might travel. And, we even have a vomitorium. It’s so totally Petronius.”
Snarlson seemed to be having a whale of time. He had a naked, richly tattooed waitress sequestered in the corner of the room. He had the chutzpah to deliver her a sermon, as he dried his left hand on her backside, on how trashy a tattoo was on a woman. I can still recall his silly screed. It was unoriginal stuff. What must her poor mother and father think of her tattoos? Tucker would be so ashamed if he had a daughter with tattoos. Ignoring that she was very working class, he wailed that people would never think she had any money or attended Mount Holyoke. I had to control my desire to tell him he had Holyoke women all wrong. These LUG (Lesbians Until Graduated) splatter tatts over their bodies to avenge themselves on their fathers and mothers for shipping them out to Holyoke after high school. Snarlson’s sadism was being gratified, so he wasn’t too attentive to anything he was saying. It was the usual stuff about the evils of abortion, the importance of traditional values, and (quite incredibly) the need to attend to the opinions of working people in West Virginia. Again, I wondered how Tucker kept it out of his head that his beloved workers in WVA had lost their jobs. The upside of unemployment was that it made it easier to attend militia meetings or join the Guard.
When I went over to say hello to Snarlson and to rescue the waitress from him, he swayed a bit, then commented that I was even shorter than he remembered me being. I told him his bow tie was lovely, which made him soften a bit.
We then walked over to Wolverine’s table. Wolverine waved away the naked waiters and waitresses after using their hair to wipe off his paws. He told me that he was so glad to see me and Snarlson. It had been too long. I wondered what Wolverine would want from us.
You now have the gist of what I know of Wolverine’s background. I have omitted an unsavory story or two. For example, Peregrine once told me that when Wolverine was short on cash, he would bash persons making a withdrawal at a cashpoint. Peregrine challenged this habit to no avail. Wolverine made it a question of safety. “Don’t worry. I won’t get caught. A whack from my walking stick knocks my mark cold. Concussions cause a minute or two of amnesia of the events before the blow. Marks never remember my looks. Also, I only rob from the working class. If you start robbing women or the rich, bobbies will actually try to catch you. This is safe.” Peregrine had to admit Wolverine never got caught. Besides, if you knew the markups Peregrine attached to his bombs and missiles, you’d also know he is the last person on earth to lecture anybody on robbery. Mind you, all sales by Munitions Galore had a fat profit, not just Peregrine’s ordnance.
Early on in Wolverine’s journalism career, he also learnt that a journalist had easy roads to additional revenue. He started using some of his juicier stories as opportunities for blackmail. Blackmail was lucrative enough to turn escalating habit. His blackmailing supplemented his income. The extra cash was also easy to hide from Constance. Further, working for a tabloid guaranteed a stream of stories that no target would want to read about in the paper. Wolverine was gleeful whenever he talked, by way of illustration, about Prince Charles efforts to suppress stories about his desire to be one of Camilla’s tampons.
To get even more money, Wolverine reviewed wines. He would only publish favourable reviews if he got an untraceable complimentary case of any well-reviewed wine. Since Wolverine did not drink bad wine, his reviews were factually honest. He just never published a favourable review without a bribe. His negative reviews, which became legendary, seemed to establish his honesty and taste. After a few years of reviewing, Wolverine had an enviable cellar for so young a gentleman.
Be all that as it may, Wolverine was now in Missouri. He had invited me to join him and Snarlson for drinks. Because Wolverine seemed an unlikely gentleman to have a holiday in Missouri, I wondered out loud why he was where mike had come to work. According to Wolverine, he too was working. He had come to Missouri to write a series of reports on the US Army and its training for the Moscow Times. He also mentioned, in a feat of free association, that National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) had a large presence 2 hours away in Saint Louis.
My bravo-sierra detector went into overdrive at that news. The badly dressed owners of the Moscow Times might pay for travel and offer modest fees for articles on the Army and NGA, perhaps with help from Putin, but Wolverine was not somebody to leave London to hang out in Missouri for a small fee. Wolverine adored large fees. I detected the secret hand of Peregrine Blonde-Bomb at work. He could make the Moscow commission a small tip to his larger finder’s fees.
From mike, I knew that Fort Leonard Wood offered fresh Army recruits Basic Combat Training. The Fort also had units that trained all branches of the armed forces in driving military vehicles and trained Combat Engineers and Sappers. The Army also trained all military specialists in CBRNE (chemical, biological, radiation, nuclear, and explosives) at Fort Leonard Wood. My budding skills as a journalist told me that it was inconceivable Wolverine was just in Missouri’s Ozarks to write for the Moscow Times and to get sozzled with Snarlson. Peregrine would have a keen desire to know about the doings of NGA and the training of the soldiers that, for example, responded to CBRNE attacks. Peregrine also had the money to make a stay away from London worth a stint in Missouri’s Ozarks. The Moscow gig was a perfect cover for Wolverine’s unmentioned role as an intelligence operative. Then, too, Wolverine liked the Ozarks. He felt at home as he stripped to run in his bare fur through the Ozarks, swim in its abundant waters, and climb trees in its vast, tall forests. He would return to his city clothes and habits refreshed after romps in the Ozark’s lush woods. It reminded him of a warmer version of Michigan’s northern forests that had made his father rich.
As already mentioned, Constance Lawless pressed Wolverine to do more than study at Eton. Contacts matter. A young wolverine must prove himself to be more than grind. Wolverine fell into the spirit of the place, but, to his mother’s consternation, never made any headway seducing beaks or clergy. Not even the desperate measure of joining the choir, a renowned nest of paederasts and budding homosexualists did him any good. He did meet one boy with excellent credentials: Peregrine Blonde-Bomb. Peregrine got his name after his dad Lord Caligula got a hatcheck girl at a London gambling den pregnant. His lordship tried to excuse himself, claiming he thought the girl was a boy. By the time he realized his error, he was too far along to care. Caligula’s solicitor tidied up the sequelae of the evening after a palimony suit. Part of the suit was that the boy’s last named be “Blonde-Bomb.” Blondes and bombs, according to Caligula, as two of the world’s treasures. When it came to money, bombs and newspapers had done well by Lord Caligula, but blondes, alas, had been a steady, albeit tolerable drain, on his income.
When the time came for Wolverine to leave Eton, like his friend Peregrine, he scoffed at the idea of heading to Oxford to suffer for four years reading “Greats.” Cambridge was most unappetizing. So, Wolverine talked his special friend, Peregrine, into getting him an interview with his father for a job at a London tabloid. At the interview, Lord Caligula liked what he saw. There sat Wolverine in a bespoke suit, coke hat, and a walking stick. The stick was of polished ebony, tipped with silver, and had a large wolverine’s head as its handle. Lord Caligula asked about it. Wolverine volunteered that as a gentleman he must never succumb to the temptation to bite or claw a foe. Like a true gentleman, Wolverine fought his enemies by beating them insensate with his walking stick.
Lord Caligula marveled at Wolverine’s breeding, but could also he write. After Wolverine responded to prompts with shameless, ribald stories about beaks, bishops, various ministers, and other public figures without any discernible concern for their truth, Lord Caligula knew he had the makings of a top-drawer Fleet Street journalist before him. The only question was how little he could be paid. Instead, Caligula said, “You’ll do. We’ll talk money later.”
Wolverine felt a surge of pleasure. He pictured sharing a flat with Peregrine. Surely, Peregrine would also earn money as a journalist. When he mentioned sharing digs with Peregrine explained it was a no-go. He would not work as a journalist. Papa was installing him as a manager at Munitions Galore, one of Lord Caligula’s most profitable businesses. “I’m going to put you in the Bomb R&D department. Think your name: Mr Blonde-Bomb. You’ll have instant credibility in the trade. Besides, you’re too honest for journalism or overseeing one of my Blond Bomb Gentlemen’s Clubs. You lack the criminal training to do a proper job.”
Now, gentle reader, let me say that Lord Caligula, in my view, got Wolverine about right, but he underestimated Peregrine. No level of sneaky criminality was beyond him. Still, his Lordship had a point. Why risk detection from a mistake by an amateur criminal? Lord Caligula had so many shell companies that nobody had any idea he owned the Blond Bomb Clubs. And why would they? In his role as a Lord, he offered the public incessant speeches on the sanctity of life, the indispensability of capital punishment, God’s Love, the dignity of work, and the need for parents to remember Salomon when chastising a child. His Lordship was also a staunch critic of all perversions, and often railed against the “infestation of London by homosexuals.” It was becoming impossible for decent men to walk down a London street without being lured from decency. Perhaps his House of Lords’ speeches are best understood in relation to two questions he put to Wolverine during the interview. “Do you attend church?” Wolverine replied, “Surely you know that at Eton chapel is mandatory.” “Good news,” cried his Lordship. He then asked, “Do you believe in the almighty?” Wolverine didn’t lose a beat. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not. But . . . it is appearances that matter.” At this point, Lord Caligula’s heart melted. He stroked Wolverine’s snout while murmuring, “What a smart, lovely boy you are.” Wolverine, if he knew anything, it was what humbug was and so did his Lordship.
Once Wolverine had his job, he telephoned his mummy. It had been a couple of years since her last personal visit to him. She had stopped by Eton during one of her routine trips to London to shop. She’d have stopped more often, but her trips took her to places several miles from Eton. Her time was valuable. On this trip, he come to see if I had followed her instructions on shoes. When she saw the pair Wolverine was wearing, a frown flitted across her face. She observed that Wolverine had had Szabo, her Hungarian cobbler, made his shoes, but she disapproved of the style. Wolverine would never go anywhere sporting Baby Janes. When Wolverine began to talk about their comfort, she cut him short, telling him that she was not asking him to dress like an Italian in pointy shoes. He could wear the male equivalent of Betty Janes, the Chelsea boot. She added that it would be unseemly for him to go to dinner parties in any stiletto heels that Szabo might have made him. And he was ordered not to wear mules when shopping either. “I am not,” hissed Constance, “a shoe model for you. It goes without saying that your bare pawed father is no model either.”
Anyway, when Constance picked up to phone and Wolverine told him of Lord Caligula’s offer to hire him, his mother surrendered to orgasmic happiness. ‘Oh, thank the gods. Your father and I did not squander are money in sending you to Eton.” She agreed that Lord Caligula would be mean with his salary. She promised Wolverine a modest allowance from his father. When Wolverine wondered if his father would go along, being so cheap and all, Constance turned fierce. “He’ll do what I tell him to do, or I’ll flog him dead. Disobey me? Whom do you imagine he is?” Now I do have to admit I have pieced all this material together from a liar’s testimony. Nevertheless, I know it to be true that Wolverine began to write. He also began his “Lawless Roaming” column. It was very popular, perhaps because it ran next to pictures of naked women in his tabloid. Peregrine also started at Munitions Galore and showed an aptitude for weapons research. He enjoyed watching bombs destroy things at the range but was never happier than when watching footage from war zones of burning, screaming men emerging from a just exploded tank. Sailors jumping into the water from an exploding ship were also a good look. “Oh, how I love my work,” he’d cluck, ”my bombs and missiles work.”
So, how did I meet Wolverine? Chess. Wolverine and I liked online chess. I had a quality that endeared me to him. I always lost. Snarlson played too. I also always lost to him, but Snarlson won as many games as he lost against Wolverine. Wolverine complained that Snarlson practiced too much. “Tucker has no spirit of the true amateur in him. I know he practices. He refuses to let raw talent speak for itself.” “Snarlson,” Wolverine conjected, “would think better about politics if he thought more about it rather than practice chess.”
Wolverine and I began having conversations via Skype. Even without meeting him cat-to-badger, during Skype chats he gave me his bio. The rest I got by hunting copies of his thrice-weekly column, “Lawless Roaming.” The column was a bit like reading a crueler, less truthful version of Auberon “Bron” Waugh’s writing. Wolverine’s enemies spread a rumor that Evelyn Waugh was his biological father. If you have heard anything about the morals of Constance Lawless, Wolverine’s mummy, the rumor about EW’s paternity verges on incontestable if she ever did meet Waugh.
Wolverine grew up in Michigan peninsula near the US/Canada line. Wolverine’s putative father, Rapacious Lawless, had vast holdings that he had attained from logging, drug-running and cruelty to beavers. Rapacious hired beavers rather than ordinary loggers. He worked them like galley slaves. Beware to any grumblers, unionists, crybeavers, eggheads, pensioners, or unproductive or loafing beavers. Any troublesome beaver was headed to a milliner in preparation for years on a hat rack. Rapacious believed with all his heart that it was a crime against wealth to coddle beavers or any other employee. It was a belief that made him rich.
Wolverine’s rich parents bought his way into Eton. They noticed the boy had a gift for languages. From an early age, he learnt fluent wolverine, beaver, badger, cat, English, and other language. The polyglot Wolverine arrived at Eton. His mother Constance hoped his time at Eton would make him more presentable. For example, Rapacious, educated in the woods, moved about naked on all fours. That was fine on the Michigan panhandle, but Constance Lawless wanted a gentleman son. Eton made Wolverine bipedal, taught him how to dress in a myriad of correct styles, imposed Latin and Greek on him, made his manners elegant, his accent posh, and familiarized him with le vice anglais and the Sodomite predilections of English richlings and their teachers. He made the mistake of speaking out against sodomy to his mum. It earned him a dirty look. “Tsk, tsk,” she said, “I dare say Octavius Caesar would have ended a nobody had he been a prissy prude like you. If I’ve flourished doing it—just look at my bright eyes and bushy tail–there’s not a reason on earth that you can’t too.” Wolverine knew better than to defy Constance. He promised to do better in the future. It never hurt his career on the English side of the Great Pond. It got his column “Lawless Roaming” jump-started when he left Eton. It also got him introduced to all the rich buggers that run the world of journalism. (to be continued)*
*I’m pleased to announce that my blog has undoubtedly been the proximate cause of MP Parish’s decision to give up his seat as a backbencher.
Before I turn to my first meeting with Snarlson and Wolverine in Waynesville, let’s let a current event distract me. Only last night, I was talking to mike about MP Neil Parish. Despite his reputable, confidence-inspiring last name, Parish has made a scandal. Several female backbenchers observed him—nobody has yet said for how long the women observed—as he sat enrapture by porn on his sneeze-stained laptop in chambers. Immediately, I knew Parish had not attended Eton or Harrow. Any Etonian, for example, would have the brains to minimize the chance of prying, unpaid, female eyes seeing porn with him. An Etonian would retire to a toilet stall, a time-honored destination for the sexually desperate when away from home. Parish, a dropout from an agriculture high school, lacked the brains and breed to seek a stall. To his credit, Parish at 65 and still keen. His wife, in the best British tradition, pretended to be nonplused by it all. She quipped that if women started holding la porn habit against a husband, the English institution of marriage would lose all viability.
Anyway, mike asked me to find out more. I knew this type of story is Wolverine meat as a journalist. I rang him. When he picked up, I asked, “Parish. What do you know?” You could hear Wolverine’s grin even across a transatlantic telephone line or whatever carried the signal. “Ah, yes, the MP porn-gazer.” I demanded details. “What kind of porn?” After many years on Fleet Street, Wolverine knew how to answer. He harrumphed, “I cannot confirm that it was tranny porn nor can I deny it.” I pressed him for what he was implying Wolverine’s education at Eton and Balliol had immunized him against the perverted behavior of perverts. Instead answering me, Wolverine began to talk about the decline of Parliament. “What a gang of weak-wristed wankers are running this country. A mere 60 or so years ago, you had Profumo chasing a nineteen-year-old model whose paramours included a soviet intelligence officer. Back then, no self-respecting MP settled for photographs of naked anything. They went out and got themselves the real deal. Like Roman politicos, they adored a good rut at an orgy. Now we have become a nation of wankers. Parish is a mere symptom.” He then mentioned that in the 60s there weren’t any women finks scurrying about the chamber playing gotcha with the likes of Parish. Wolverine then did a brief riff from the blue on our friend Snarlson. Our masculinity-obsessed boy, Snarlson took a lot of vacations to Nana Plaza in Bangkok*, but that was before he discovered the new Red Light Therapy. When I asked what he meant, Wolverine sighed. “ It’s all a sign of the times.” He added, “Don’t you recall the first time you met him in Waynesville.”
So, we are back to where I had planned to start. How it came to pass that Wolverine Lawless, Tucker Snarlson, and I met for the first time in a Waynesville bar.
*Nobody knows if Snarlson ever vacationed in Thailand, let alone frequented, the ladyboy-dominated Nana Plaza. Wolverine was not a journalist to let Truth interfere with a yummy story. Besides, he told me this. He was careful about what lies he put into print.
How was the trip from San Antonio to Fort Leonard Wood? Let me be honest. I don’t know. I slept for most of it. I’d wake up from time to time to note our progress. The cars, Millie & Juan, moved north until we reached Oklahoma City. After a night in a motel east of Oklahoma City, we got up early and then had a day of more driving and long naps. Once out of Oklahoma, we entered southwest Missouri. It wasn’t much. I could see why Mother Earth hates it and Oklahoma so much that she made a habit of dropping tornadoes on the land.
When we got to Saint Robert, mike got us to the house he had rented from the Swindling Housewives of Saint Roberts, a group of women with a guy boss whose business was feeding on soldiers coming to Fort Leonard Wood. The house wasn’t as bad as I expected. It was large with a huge partially finished basement that had a view of the garden, a large patch of grass with a fire pit that sloped away from the house until it dropped into woods. The top floor had lots of room. Bart, Fielding, Quine, Chicago, and I made ourselves at home. After a couple of days, Yellow Knight’s truck arrived. A new ensemble of squires commanded it.
They carried the furniture into our new place. It was a challenge for them. They had managed to mangle a lot of it but reassembling put them to a test of devilish complexity. They failed. Roberta had to show them how to put the bed back together. As the squire charged with reassembly looked on, stupefied by the bed’s unfathomable geometry, without comprehension.
Roberta called Yellow Knight to complain about the quality of the move and the addition of various never mentioned charges. Yellow Knight, with his uncanny ability to detect an incoming complaint, dodged Roberta’s calls for almost a week. When she reached him at least, he took full advantage of the fact that he was in Texas and she was in Missouri. Once again I saw that the best way to avoid losing a fight is to stay as far (literally) as you can from it. Yellow Knight understood this. Don’t cheat people staying in town. Cheat people who are at a safe distance from you.
Roberta thought she had a job lined up at a Fort Leonard Wood Clinic. They offered her a pay packet that would have embarrassed Ebenezer Scrooge to put on the table. Voila. Roberta lined up an associate nursing dean’s gig in Saint Louis, a couple of hundred miles down the road that paid well. She took a flat in Webster Groves, whilst mike took on the habit of weekly visits to Saint Louis form Saint Robert, a grubby town beyond the gates of Fort Leonard Wood, but adjacent to Waynesville, yet another grubby town, but one that had a perfect bar in its favor. The Lost Cat Tavern was a secret watering hole of my friend Wolverine Lawless and his buddy Tucker Snarlson. Tucker liked to sneak away for long binges. He’d get drunk drinking Campari, sometimes Dubonnet. Keep in mind that Snarlson was still wearing bow ties back then. Wolverine stuck to whisky or triple gin martinis with a side of pickled herring. I drink in moderation and tend to stick to Amaretto and cream cocktails, though Wolverine would sometimes treat me to a White Russian. But why would a guy like Wolverine be drinking in Waynesville? And why did he have a passion for Michigan athletics?
Why Missouri? You may recall a bit of advice from Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle. Commit this to memory: “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god.” God put this suggestion in mike’s head by getting him hired to work as a boss-man psychologist at Fort Leonard Wood (aka Fort Lost in the Woods). My beloved servant mike would no longer be at the bottom of the psychologist heap. Instead, he would have risen to the lofty equivalent of Staff Sergeant for psychologists. He was so proud.
When anybody starts a climb to the top, moves happen. So, mike hired a pack of thieving movers, The Yellow Knight Moving Company. In time, mike learnt the Yellow Knight feared complaints more than a deer fears headlights, but with one difference. If the Yellow Knight suspected complaints, he did not freeze. He ran.
Yellow Knight’s squires arrived to load the trailer 4 days after Chaucey got folded into his grave. Roberta didn’t trust them. She jailed me, Bart, Fielding, Quine, and Chicago in an empty restroom. She shut the door and put a sign on it that read “CATS. DO NOT OPEN. USE HALL BATHROOM” in English and Spanish. Anybody wanting to have a pee or what-have-you had to use the other toilet. Perhaps with a team of over-educated squires, the sign would have worked. These squires looked to have spent more time in tattoo parlors than schools.
It was just a matter of time. One of the squires opened the door, freeing us. We all skedaddled. Everybody but Bart headed to my old bedroom that Roberta had, without my permission, made into a nursery. Bart took a different route. Out of the house like bat out of hell she went. Roberta, almost as fast, locked us into the now unfurnished nursery. By the time she rushed out the front door, Bart had vanished. When mike told me about it, he said anybody, including the squires, could see the steam coming out of her ears. I should have told her that with illiterates it is better to rely on pictures rather than words. I could also hear from the nursery her saying some not very kind stuff to the squires. The prescient Yellow Knight could not be reached.
The longer Bart was invisible, the more murderously angry Roberta got. The squires stayed clear of her too. When they finally had packed out the house, they got their truck started and rolling to Missouri. These squirers may have had profound dyslexia in Spanish and English, but they were smarter than to dare mention a tip to Roberta. That’s why they are all still alive.
Now picture it. There we were. The house was empty. The next thing was drive to Fort Leonard Wood. Fielding’s fate was in the balance. In theory, she was still the responsibility of her across the street neighbor. That neighbor kept assuring that cats should decide for themselves where to live. When asked if Fielding was going to Missouri, he said, “Yes.” Fielding was grateful ever after. On Fielding’s tale about it, mike was the conduct of the bus. He, not Roberta, had given her a ticket to ride.
Roberta felt good for Fielding, but she was obsessing about Bart. Roberta announced she would stay in San Antonio until she found Bart. Bart heard that. She felt so guilty she came out. She may have preferred to stay in the Barrio, but if Roberta loved her that much, as Bart told me, “You must reward that kind of love in a servant.” We were all tucked into the two cars: Millie and Juan. Millie was Roberta’s white Chrysler 300 and Juan was mike’s burgundy Mercury Marquis. Juan insisted that mike put on a cabbie’s hat whenever he drove him. The cars fired up. The Northeast journey had begun.
I must mention the sadness that gnawed my heart as I felt as I prepared to leave. Walt, my rescuer at Martinez Creek, refused an offer from mike to come to Missouri with us. Walt had befriended mike and they respected each other. When asked why he was staying in Texas rather then come to Missouri, Walt explained his rolling-stone lifestyle wasn’t suited for living with servants. Walt asked for one last favor. “Feed me a last bowl of my favorite vittles on the porch. It will be my last supper with you., a sign of our everlasting friendship.” And so it happened. And so it was. We love you, Walt.