1012: The reading . . .
Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 44 continues
THE READING of episode forty-four of Dead Air, “Funny Peculiar,” was delayed beyond the usual time, at the request of Lou and Elaine, who repaired to Lou’s room for nearly an hour to take care of some urgent business involving one of Lou’s fingers and pies. When I did begin the reading, I had a sizable audience for a Wednesday, but the audience did not include include Jane, who was upstairs, sleeping off that one or two Baldies too many.
WHEN I WAS A BOY, not yet a teenager, I found myself engaged in several projects that seemed to ask more and more of me — improvements, embellishments, and enlargements that kept me very busy for a boy of my age at that time. I built a flying-saucer detector on a whim and became the exclusive supplier of flying-saucer detectors in all of Babbington, my home town. I built a radio transmitter that grew into a network. I set out to camouflage an artificial cave and wound up transforming a corner of my back yard into a sylvan paradise, the ideal picnic spot.
One afternoon, after school, I walked out to the area where the hidden cave was and found my mother and two neighbors, Mrs. Jerrold and Mrs. Kilmer, sitting there on a checkered tablecloth that they had spread out on the attractive ground. They were pouring coffee from a Howzitno Hot-or-Cold vacuum jug and passing a tray of crumb cake and crullers from the Yummy Good Baked Goods Company.
“Peter!” said my mother. “You’ve discovered our hideaway! Come and have a cruller.”
The crullers she offered were the glazed kind, my favorite, but I held back. I was afraid that if I passed the secret opening to the cave while they were watching me I would do something to betray it. I put my hands in my pockets and scuffed my feet on the ground, in the manner of a shy adolescent in the presence of adult women.
“Join us, Peter,” said Mrs. Jerrold. She was wearing a shirtwaist dress, and she had her legs folded under her in such a way that her dress was pulled up a bit. I would have liked to join the group, sit near Mrs. Jerrold, lean across her in reaching for a cruller, and so on.
“Isn’t this a perfect spot?” asked Mrs. Kilmer. “I mean, just look at it! It’s got everything — that nice stump, the fallen log for sitting on, the wildflowers, this cute little mound — ”
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“It’s a little piece of paradise right in our own back yard!” she declared. “Well, your back yard, Ella.”
“I never knew it was here,” my mother said. “I came out to see what you were working on back here, Peter, and I discovered this.”
“You know,” said Mrs. Jerrold, “sitting here, I feel as if I’m — well, it’s as if I’ve been released — released from the ties that bind me to the everyday world — the world of laundry and dinner and dishes, and the thousand little cares of life, all the nagging little worries, the ones that make wrinkles. They vanish — poof! Here I feel young again, lighthearted and happy. It makes me want to sing! Don’t you feel that way?”
“It is pretty,” said my mother.
“Anyone want another piece of crumb cake?” asked Mrs. Kilmer, cutting a piece for herself.
“Just look around, Peter,” said Mrs. Jerrold. She put her hand on the back of my head so that she could turn me like a ventriloquist’s dummy and make me see the scene as she did. “Isn’t it just perfect?”
I looked around as she turned my head, and I couldn’t see anything wrong with it. Mrs. Jerrold was right: it was perfect. As soon as I found myself about to agree with her, I realized that perfection was its flaw! Surely an interloper, looking for a hidden cave, would notice the grotesque unblemished perfection of this spot? Though emotions warred within me — pride in the perfection of the place, disappointment in myself for having omitted the flaws that would have made it better camouflage, fear that its impossible perfection would give it away — I felt that I had to test its verisimilitude, so I looked around, shuddered, and said, “Is it just me, or is there something funny about this place?”
“Funny?” asked Mrs. Jerrold. She turned to look around at the scene. Her skirt rode up along her legs another fraction of an inch.
“Funny peculiar,” I said.
They demurred, professing to see nothing at all odd about it.
“There’s something artificial about it,” I suggested. “Look around you. The gentle contour of this little hillock that we’ve settled ourselves on, the angle of that fallen log, that cluster of wildflowers over there, the proportions of that stump. The hand of nature is not as sure as this, not this steady.”
They all looked around, and they wrinkled their brows, and I thought that I could see them beginning to feel uneasy in the place and trying to decide what it was, exactly, that made them feel so.
“Where are the weeds?” I asked. “Where’s the ragweed, the milkweed, the skunk cabbage?”
“Oh, Peter, you’re a funny guy,” said Mrs. Jerrold. She touched my hand.
“Funny?” I said.
“Funny peculiar,” she said.
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 1012, Mark Dorset considers Art and Artifice, Artificial versus Natural, and Garden versus Wilderness from this episode.
Subscribe to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy
Share The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy
Watch Well, What Now? This series of short videos continues The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy in the present.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, Where Do You Stop?, What a Piece of Work I Am, and At Home with the Glynns.
You can buy hardcover and paperback editions of all the books at Lulu.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.