The Book of Counted Sorrows

The old carriage garages, next to the carriage master’s cottage, no longer house carriages, but contain hundreds of balls of floss, of varying sizes, each clearly labeled with the name of the person or animal who has contributed to it. In recognition of the fact that the extraordinary frequency of flossing required on the estate will lead to enormous floss balls, the walls and roof of the old carriage garages were raised from one story to four, providing forty-foot-high interior clearance. The corroded gas lamps were replaced with top-of-the-line, cold-cathode lighting that makes it easy to read the labels on the balls and to find loose ends of floss.

Skippy – or sometimes his assistant, Werner – securely adds the latest contribution to the proper ball, under the watchful eye of the contributor. Thereafter, the necessary legal papers are signed and notarized, and one is free to go about one’s business until after the next meal, snack, or diet cola.

Skippy and Werner conduct themselves at all times with the very deepest respect – nay, with reverence – for the rules in the official estate manual. Were either man to tie a floss contribution to the wrong ball, and were this mistake to be recognized by Mrs. Scuttlesby when she reviewed the 24-hour-a-day videotape record of the floss collection, the offender would be offered his choice of punishments: (1) His right thumb would be cut off with a dull cheese slicer; or (2) his nostrils would be stuffed with peanut butter and his nose offered as a canape to a ravenous weasel; or (3) he would be hung by his testicles from the carriage garage rafters and flailed with live rattlesnakes.

Such punishments may seem extreme, but at Mrs. Scuttlesby’s insistence, these – and other more frightful potential chastisements – are incorporated into the employment agreements of all workers who serve in sensitive posts on the estate. Having been admitted to the California Bar Association by a sheer act of stubborn will, she has defended these contractual terms – in the case of another employee, Casper Nork – all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where the justices delivered a precedent-setting unanimous decision in her favor, thus requiring Nork to surrender his left ear to be used as Mrs. Scuttlesby’s key fob.

In triumph, addressing the lopsided Nork, Mrs. Scuttlesby said, “Never underestimate the determination of a British head housekeeper. You useless idiot, have you never read Rebecca?”

After delivering my used floss to Skippy, I pocketed my pink copy of the receipt, made my way across the back lawn, through the stunning topiary, to the main house. Thirsty, I considered stopping in the kitchen to acquire a diet cola from Sedley Nottingham, the Commander of Beverages, but my thirst was cured by the thought of returning so soon to the carriage master’s cottage with another length of floss.

Thus I returned here to my study to offer you my sincere apologies for such a prolonged absence.

5

The Hideous Fate of Langford Crispin, for Real This Time.

The first recorded owner of The Book of Counted Sorrows was Langford Crispin, the immortal film star. Born Nate Furt, the only child of Sepsis and Donna Furt of Cheese Falls, Wisconsin, he went on the vaudeville circuit at sixteen, tap dancing while singing and simultaneously juggling flaming snakes, in blackface.

Certain unnamed associates of the legendary performer Al Jolson -who did not himself juggle snakes, flaming or otherwise, but who did frequently appear in blackface, which is surely no less bizarre to our modem sensibilities – waylaid poor Nate in an alley behind a theater in Cleveland. These show-biz rowdies terrified him with much aggressive finger wagging, rude use of the word foam (the verb form, not the noun), and with dire threats to tell his saintly mother, back in Cheese Falls, that while on the road he had become a sissy boy who wore women’s clothes and conducted an immoral romantic relationship with the woolly half of Laura Lunney’s famous act – Laura Lunney and Her Singing Llama. This was, of course, a filthy lie, but Nate never again performed in blackface. Partly to make himself less visible to Jolson’s ruthless associates and also as a consequence of a belated realization that Nate Furt was not an ideal name for a would-be vaudeville star, he legally changed his name to Bob Furt, later to Burt Furt, later still to Melbourne Furt, then to Foghorn Leghorn, subsequently to Yosemite Sam, then (only briefly and in desperation over his floundering career) to Al Jolson, and finally to Langford Crispin.

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