120: “So I sat there, . . .”
Little Follies, “The Fox and the Clam,” Chapter 13
13
“SO I SAT THERE, looking at Mr. Grundtvig,” said Matthew, between bites of the tuna fish sandwich I had given him, “and I said to myself, ‘This is it. Everything depends on this.’ There I was. I was actually in the predicament that the man in the rowboat was in. Grundtvig began tapping his pencil on his pad and he looked up at me. As soon as he looked at me, I knew what to do. I gave him the kind of story you would give him! You know what I told him happened at the end? The guy was carried off by a mermaid! They lived happily ever after. I couldn’t believe it. I heard myself saying all this, but I couldn’t believe it.”
I couldn’t believe it either. I sat looking at Matthew, who went on with his story, filling in the details, laughing, and pounding the table with his hand. My heart sank. The more he elaborated on the story, the surer I became that we would be going our separate ways. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Matthew what I had done.
[to be continued on Friday, October 29, 2021]
You can listen to this episode on the Personal History podcast.
In Topical Guide 120, Mark Dorset considers Work: Working at Cross-Purposes from this episode.
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At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” and “The Static of the Spheres,” the first four novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.