p. walked to the top of Blue Job Mountain behind the house and looked out over the land below, wished it were his as far as he could see, all the way to the limits of the horizon;
q. checked all the above items off his list, one by one, as he performed them, and when necessary, revised the list to accommodate the upcoming week and any changes in routine that might be necessitated.
40. As a matter of course he tossed all mail addressed to Occupant into the trash can in the kitchen or in winter directly into the wood stove. Once, though, as if on a whim, he opened and read a plea for contributions to Boys’ Town. After that he resumed tossing all such mail into the trash can or wood stove, as before.
41. He liked to open the glove compartment of his car and find it neat and orderly. Flashlight, registration, New Hampshire road map, sharpened pencil, matches, extra fuses lightly rolled in a strip of electrician’s tape.
42. To his third wife (Jenny): “I’d as soon wipe my ass with a corncob as this damned stuff. Can’t you buy better toilet paper than this? It’s like sandpaper, for Christ’s sake!” To his fourth wife (Maureen): “You trying to give me piles or something? How much d’you save, buying this cheap shit? It feels like emery cloth!” To his fifth wife (Dora): “This stuff feels like pie crust, for Christ’s sake! What gives?” He figured that, because of his size, he was more sensitive to the texture of toilet paper than normal-sized people were. He also knew that made no sense, but he didn’t care. Whether a thing made sense or not had nothing to do with whether it was true or not.
43. He didn’t like dogs. “All tongue, lips and flapping tails. No sense of their own worth. Which makes them worthless.”
44. He didn’t like cats. “Sneaky bastards. They love dying even more than death. Which in my book makes ’em unreliable.”
45. He didn’t like horses. “Should’ve gone extinct forty or fifty years ago, when they couldn’t compete with tractors or trucks anymore for work or with cars and bicycles for transportation. Besides, they’re ridiculous-looking. Bodies’re too big for their legs. I’d like ’em if they were the way they used to be, before the Arabs started screwing ’em up — dog-sized things, like white-tailed deer, only smarter. Probably made good eating.”
46. He hated domestic fowl of all kinds. “I don’t even like to eat one of the bastards, unless it’s cut up so I can’t recognize what kind of animal it was when it was still alive.”
47. He liked pigs. “Now you take your typical pig. That’s an animal with a developed understanding of its life. No delusions. Not like cows. Cows are under the impression that people keep them around because they like them. Pigs never make that mistake.”
48. What he hated about sheep was the way most people regarded them: “Most people think sheep are sweet and gentle. The truth is, sheep sleep twenty-four hours a day. As far as being alive goes, they’re located only one step this side of lawn furniture. Three stomachs covered with a woolly mitten. Personally, if it wasn’t for the mutton, I’d rather see a flock of cotton bales.”
49. “I’d make a lousy farmer,” he confessed. “Plants are okay, though. I don’t mind being around plants, long as they don’t get too cute, if you know what I mean.”
50. He claimed not to know his birth date. “I was barely there, for Christ’s sake.” When asked how old he was, he would answer, “About thirty-seven,” or, “About forty-two,” or whatever, always, of course, giving his correct age. He claimed his sense of time was different from most people’s in that it was more precise. Doubtless he knew his birth date and, when required by law, provided it, for he possessed a driver’s license, union card, Social Security card, and so on, like the rest of us.
51. Whenever in conversation the word “Florida” came up, he would interject, “Coney Island with palm trees.”
52. He did not believe in God. He said that when God believed in him, then he’d believe in them both. He made his statement somberly, with care, apparently with full awareness of its theological, philosophical and psychological implications.
53. He had lifetime subscriptions to The Farmer’s Almanac, Reader’s Digest, and National Geographic. Frequently, however, he sneeringly referred to an individual as, “The type of man who has a lifetime subscription to The Farmer’s Almanac,” or, “… to Reader’s Digest,” or, “… to National Geographic.” Once, when someone had the temerity to point out that he himself owned lifetime subscriptions to these very periodicals, he answered, “Of course. How else do you think I’d know the types?”
54. He woke at six o’clock every morning of his adult life, even when he did not have to go to work. He did not own an alarm clock and could when necessary wake himself earlier than six and at exactly the time he wished to waken. He seemed to require no more than five hours’ sleep a night. In providing this information, he explained that this was because when he went to bed he went to sleep immediately and when he slept he concentrated on it. “Like a machine,” he explained. “No, like a rock,” he added.
55. Exposés and public scandals seemed to make him sad, as if he were suddenly reminded of some great loss from his childhood.
56. “I hate a melee. If you want a fight, you ought to make it personal. Insult somebody. Insult his mother, his girl friend, his manhood, whatever it is he thinks needs protection.”
57. He never permitted any of his wives to make breakfast for him. Once Jenny, attempting to curry his favor, got up an hour earlier than he and prepared a breakfast of fried eggs, pancakes, sausages, fresh biscuits, coffee, and melon, and when he came downstairs and discovered this lovely meal, he was enraged and stormed out of the house. Later, when describing the event, he explained his rage by pointing out the control a woman can obtain over a man if he lets her imitate his mother. “Good intentions can’t dull a sharp knife,” he aphorized. In fairness, he also pointed out the control a man can have over a woman if she lets him imitate her father. “It’s how I kept all my women in line. While I kept them.”
58. He despised throw pillows, bric-a-brac, knickknacks, and souvenirs, scatter rugs, doilies, and imitation chandeliers, flower decals, pink appliances, the color off-white, and whitewall tires, decorated mailboxes, and lawn sculpture, and David Susskind, and game shows, and television weathermen. He believed that you are what you love, and therefore he despised people who loved any or all of these things. He also believed that you are not what you despise, and since you cannot very easily control what you love and thus cannot very easily control what you are, you therefore ought at least to make a concerted attempt to avoid being what would disgrace you. For him, then, the most interesting person was the one who hated more things than anyone else, and the least interesting was the one who loved more things than anyone else. Errol Flynn, he thought, was an example of an interesting man. Lee Harvey Oswald and Arthur Bremer were interesting. Gerald Ford, Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles were not.
59. He loved compression when, as a quality, it was joined to symmetry — as in algebra or symbolic logic, a portable tape recorder, a double-bitted ax, or a Maltese cross. In fact, his favorite design was a Maltese cross, and he frequently left it doodled behind him, on restaurant tablecloths, condensation on windows, sand, snow, and dust.