PHHH #1192.9

Date: March 16, 2008

Hare: Delicate Psyche

Hounds: Eurotrash, Wipi, Hand Solo, Hey YO! Paully, Hare in my 
Zipper, Max the Worried Dog, Speedbumps, Pyroman

Weather: Bright

Place: "23" Orchard Road, Montgomery

Time: an hour

Polemics, Descriptions, and Lies: 

Mrs. Bradbury came inside from an afternoon of squirrel skinning to 
find her husband staring moodily out the window of the back forty.

"What's the matter, Paw?" she asked while rinsing the blood off her 
hands. "You haven't looked like this since that bear got your best 
hound."

"I have no son." He turned to spit in the galvanized bucket as slate-
colored clouds scudded over freshly turned turnip fields.

"Why, of course we do, two fine young men who are out changing the 
world for the better."

His face turned harder. "You know what I mean, Maw."

"Now, don't be so hard on Forrest. It wasn't easy pulling up stakes 
for that eastern-elite college."

"Shore it were hard! Playing with foolish things like liquid helium, 
taking up with foreigners. . . What, The Whole Earth Catalog wasn't 
good enough to find a thesis topic? He takes a cheese eater over a 
cornsilk girl? And now, now, well, durn it all, Maw, you seen the 
email, look how he set that hash!"

Mrs. Bradbury sighed. Her husband was right. She put her hands on 
his broad shoulders and tried to rub the tension away.

"I know. What kind of Bradbury would lead any group, much less those 
nice hashers, over an entire parking lot?"

"It's worse'n that! He took'em through a strip mall, across a double-
yellow stripe road twice! Where's the skill'n in pounding pavement?"

Mr. Bradbury slumped, his anger spent.

"It just, well, you know, I taught him everything I could about 
blazing trail, using the lay o' the natural land without breaking a 
pine needle, and he was doing so well." A tear trickled down his 
cheek. "Some sets without a road under foot. Six cases a' beer lugged 
in a half mile from a parking lot. He coulda been one of the greats. 
And when this happens it's like a mule kick in the gut."

Silence filled the tidy homestead, snug against the coursing winds of 
the northwest, until Mrs. Bradbury finally, tentatively, spoke.

"Well, Paw, he did take them through three backyards--practica lly set 
a record for trespassing. "

Mr. Bradbury brightened. "Ain't seen nothing like it since he 
brought'em through Pashtun land on his rookie set. And how 'bout 
that house where the back porch was loaded with bottles a' wine and 
Easter peeps? That Weepee practically walked right in, thinking they 
were done."

"And it turned out they weren't but he knew one of the visitors? And 
gave the lady of the house all them golf balls he'd been saving for 
Paully? Who'd a thunk it?"

Mr. Bradbury visibly relaxed. "Mebbe it weren't so bad after all, 
Maw. C'mon, get some a' them squirrel fritters going for dinner, and 
I'll get us a bottle a' apple likker from the barn."