— My God.
— No don't turn it off! Wait… The screen brightened. A leggy blonde cycled down a country lane and they were told she'd found relief from hemorrhoids as she passed them beaming, a woman gnashed gleaming dentures and they were told how she kept them in place, a sometime movie star pursued the active life with a tennis racket no longer hampered by incontinence — well try another station! and once again the sirens wailed, flags, placards, beer cans and fists flew, a moment's inattention and an armoured personnel carrier spewing tear gas down an emptied street — my God look! but the black body necklaced with a blazing tire turned out to lie at a crossroad in Soweto and now, poised at a casement window, a lady in impeccable negligee stirred by a gentle breeze over phantom breasts smiled serenely on the unruffled landscape of a country morning after a satisfactory bout with an overnight laxative in the day's early light, mist rising on the pond out there and the smell of — some more coffee? Ilse? over the morning paper's rehearsal of flying fists and beer cans, rocks and occasional items of intimate apparel culminating in twenty seven cases of injury, one of alleged rape and two arrests heralding a national outpouring of grief signaled on highways and byways throughout the land in lighted headlamps blinded by the sun as screens everywhere came to life with each delicate step in extracting the limp twelve pound remains from their fatal entrapment following emergency measures taken by the Village under the watchful eyes of dark suited local officials in unaccustomed neckties knotted once for all and hung over bedposts during the week, assorted insurance adjusters and senior citizens, white minister, black pastor, and the media cornering a stoic James B shouldered aside by his expansive father confronting their microphones in a mix of cordiality and vengeance, survivors of the night's melee and the entire resident dog population of every hue and cry, their numbers to be swelled in these days to come by gifts from many points of the compass and as various a herd of givers, a mastiff from a black coalition in Chicago and a pit bull from an anonymous donor in Mississippi, two salukis and an Afghan signed ChubbyChasers International and a registered cocker spaniel from a former First Lady and a springer from a more recent one but none, elegized the press, could take the place of little Spot in the heart of little James B, or in the heart of America, or, as it soon proved, in the astute vision of the boy's guardian ad litem filing suit against the Village charging negligence, distraint, conversion, conspiracy, loss of companionship and restraint of trade where it all might have ended down the road in Judge Elbert Haynes' Wink County Supreme Court with no more than the usual racial abrasions and related high jinks attendant on jury selection thereabouts but for the shrewd eye of presiding Village Board member J Harret Ruth surveying the wider prospect of Federal jurisdiction and so proceeding by impleader to provide the requisite out-of-state litigant in the odd bedfellow of the original creator of the vehicle of entrapment and 'rusting travesty of our great nation's vision of itself thus satisfying the simmering local appetite for a proven common enemy — landing the whole enchilada, as Harry phrased it standing there in front of the smoking fireplace rattling the law newsletter he'd been reading from — right back in the old man's lap.
— Whatever all that means.
— Means they've dragged this sculptor Szyrk into it makes it a Federal case, diversity of citizenship.
— A name like that what could he expect.
— Nothing to do with his name Christina, just meant to protect somebody from another state against getting chewed up by your local rednecks.
— Which is exactly what will happen. Can't you fix that fire?
— Exactly. Get a jury trial going they'll chew him up and spit him out, something wrong with the damper I just opened it. The old man they're really out to get, this J Harret Ruth with his own cheap political agenda's nose up so far between the cheeks with that Neanderthal senator of theirs up for reelection, if they can kill the Judge on this appeals court seat that's what he's after, you'll see. Perfect forum, you get the…
— You've got to do something about it Harry, my…
— Not a damn thing I can do about it, just told you it's the law. Demand a jury trial within ten days after the pleadings and they've got one, a perfect forum. You get the…
— The fire, I'm talking about the fire. My eyes are burning I can hardly…
— Wood's probably wet. Or green, you get a leading old time states' rights advocate like Bilk up there in front of these hambones talking about the Federal government spending their tax money where it's got no business, he's already stood out there on the Senate floor and said art today is spelled with an f hasn't he? right in the public's face? Product of warped sick minds, sexual deviants, degenerates and foreigners Szyrk's made to order. Where are you going?
— To open some windows, why on earth you had to build a fire.
— Just seemed, Sunday afternoon in the country a fall day like this it seemed like what you do.
— You ought to turn on the football game then, you always like seeing somebody lose. You're simply not a country person Harry, you shouldn't go around building fires, any minute Oscar will be out from his nap and he'll have a fit.
— Nothing unusual about that.
— Well you can't blame him can you? Day after day waiting for this decision he calls Mister Basic and he's told he's out of the office, out of town, we're both nervous wrecks and these lawyers he got God knows where on his accident case now what are you doing.
— This, damn, damper keeps slipping closed trying to, damn. There. All be clear by suppertime.
— I can't wait till suppertime Harry, another day of this, another hour I'll lose my mind, if I have to watch one more nature program. No deer or bears or anything healthy no, no the ones he watches are all animals pretending to be flowers, deadly insects that look like twigs, harmless looking creatures simply seething with poison just lying in wait it's all rather unwholesome, and Ilse. If you could hear the splashing and carrying on in there when he has his bath God knows what they're up to, at least he hasn't mentioned that mess of a blonde I think I hear him coming, Harry for God's sake. A cup of tea and we'll leave. I'm all packed and I cannot endure another discussion deciding whether we'll have salmon with the dill anchovy butter or poached in an aspic glaze, simply tell him your office called and, oh Oscar? We've got to be off.
— But I thought, but Harry just got here Christina I thought he'd come out for a rest look, look he's built a lovely fire and I've told her to make tea I thought, about supper I thought…
— So did I, but they called and want him in there first thing in the morning. We want to miss the Sunday night traffic.
— But when did, I didn't hear the phone ring, I…
— It's ringing right now.
— No, I can reach it but, hello?
— Harry, can you bring down my bags?
— Who? But, oh, later, call later I, goodbye.
— Oh Ilse, you needn't bother with the tea. Well who was it.
— Who was, oh. A wrong number. They got the wrong number.
— Then why did you tell them to call back later.
— I just meant, you said Harry was exhausted that he needed a rest and I wanted to talk to him about the…
— My God Oscar we're all exhausted, we all need a rest Harry? can you hear me? She passed to fight a casement window closed, — there's a small makeup case in the bathroom, will you bring it? And she stood arrested, looking down the lawn where only the day before he'd stared out, even called her to see the only thing that moved out there, a bluebird hopping across the discoloured grass? or was it only a jay, but she'd been too busy to look, picking up streamers of newspaper, scraps of notepaper — if there's one thing I can't stand it's litter, will you ever learn to keep your things in one place? And now, — you've got to get that damper fixed Oscar, before somebody burns down the house. Are we ready? The squeeze of a hand, of a shoulder, — let me know if you hear from Father, perhaps you should call him, Ilse? Will you help us with these bags? And out on the veranda, — I wish you'd look down on the front lawn Ilse, there's a blue plastic bag blowing around out there where someone's been eating potato chips or something, don't things around here look shabby enough? Bracing herself against the bound of the car up the pits in the driveway, — that veranda is one thing, but if there's one thing I cannot stand it's, look out! throwing her arm up.