Topical Guide 42
Mark Dorset
Bolotomy River
On the right bank, as you drift toward the bay, note the occasional rude dwelling on stilts. These quaint huts are, like the people who live in them, vestiges of a simpler past.
Boating on the Bolotomy
The Lodkochnikovs, Raskol’s family, lived in a small shingled house that stood on pilings at the very edge of the river, set back from the road behind a thick growth of cattails. At high tide, the water was only a foot or two below the floor, and Raskol’s mother would often drop a fishing line through a small trapdoor in the kitchen to see what she might come up with for dinner. At low tide, the house stood out of the water, over a slick slope of black muck and two generations of Lodkochnikov trash.
Little Follies, “Life on the Bolotomy”
These could be scenes from the final stretch of the Bolotomy in the time when the Christensen sisters visited. They are not scenes from the final stretch of the Bolotomy in the time when the Christensen sisters visited, but they could be.
Castration Anxiety
It’s back again, fresh from its starring role in “Do Calms Bite?”
Once, Ernie had told his father that he wanted to get a clamboat of his own instead of continuing to work for the old man. Mr. Lodkochnikov had leaped up from his chair and grabbed the boy from behind, twisted his ears, and lectured him a bit on the subject of paternal respect. Ernie listened pretty politely for a while, but his father’s arguments were apparently not convincing enough, for when he had finished, Ernie stood up, lifting Mr. Lodkochnikov, who still had one arm locked around his head, and ran backward against the wall repeatedly until the old man let go and fell to the floor. Then he told his father that from now on he intended to do whatever he damn well pleased. Mr. Lodkochnikov said nothing. The table was cleared in silence, and the mood in the house that evening was murky. At night, when Ernie was asleep in the attic with Little Ernie and Raskol, Mr. Lodkochnikov crept up the stairs and tied a note to Ernie’s toe. The note said:
If you behave rudely again,
I’ll cut this off.
Little Follies, “Life on the Bolotomy”
[more to come on Monday, July 12, 2021]
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