boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

494 Anthony Boucher
Y o u r q u o t e mission u n q u o t e a l l a m i s t a k e. r e t u r n w a s h i n g t o n.
I don’t get it. Maybe when I see the chief again—
So now, regretfully, we bid farewell to the sunny, happy town of Grover, nestling
at the foot—
Proutyville, June 29.
As you—whoever you are and whatever you think you’re doing reading other
people’s diaries—can see, my diary’s turned up again. And that I am, as they say in
the classics, stark, raving mad seems about the only possible answer.
Maybe I thought the chief was crazy. What’s he going to call me?
I read over again what the old guy with—or without—the beard said. Where he
said I’d find the answer. I didn’t.
So I went over to see him again, but he wasn’t there. There was a fat man drinking
beer out of a quart bottle, and as soon as he saw me he poured a glassful and
handed it over unasked.
It tasted good, and I said, “Thanks,” and meant it. Then I described the old boy
and asked where was he.
The fat man poured himself another glass and said, “Damfino. He come in
here one day and says, ‘See you’re setting up to shoe horses. Need an old hand at
the business?’ So I says, ‘Sure, what’s your name?’ and he says, ‘Wieland,’ leastways
that’s what I think he says, like that beer out in California. ‘Wieland,’ he says. ‘I’m a
smith,’ so he goes to work. Then just this morning he up and says, ‘I’m needed more
elsewhere,’ he says, ‘I gotta be going,’ he says, ‘now you been a swell employer,’ he
says, ‘so if you—’ ” The fat man stopped. “So he up and quit me.”
“Because you were a swell employer?”
“That? That was just something he says. Some foolishness. Hey, your glass is
empty.” The fat man filled my glass and his own.
The beer was good. It kept me from quite going nuts. I sat there the most of
the evening. It wasn’t till late that a kind of crawly feeling began to hit me. “Look,”
I said. “I’ve drunk beer most places you can name, but I never saw a quart bottle
hold that many glasses.”
The fat man poured out some more. “This?” he said, offhand-like. “Oh, this is
just something Wieland give me.”
And I suppose I’m writing all this out to keep from thinking about what I’m
going to say to the chief. But what can I say? Nothing but this:
Grover isn’t at war. And when you’re there, it’s true.
Washington, June 30.
I’m not going to try to write the scene with the chief. It still stings, kind of. But he
softened up a little toward the end. I’m not to be fired; just suspended. Farnsworth’s
taking the Grover assignment. And I get a rest—
Bide-a-wee Nursing Home, July 1.