Sunday, September 14, 2008

The Scout Master Simms

The scout master Simms wore his shirt out, the tails hanging well below his pant’s pockets. His father, Rupert Simms, a one-armed sawyer by trade, wore his uniform day and night, claiming it brought him good luck and the world better weather. The scout master Simms lived in a one-room walkup in a two story house and had a pet dog with three legs and a goiter. The scout master Simms used the suppurate to ward off restlessness and Rupert’s Leg, a malady of the knee and ankle that caused the sufferer to tilt at right angles to left planes, and to discourage yellow fever. Sal Camden, a cork-foot bailer with a whale’s eye view of the world, lived in the two-room walkup opposite the scout master Simms one-room.

The proprietor of the Greek Deli, Dolmen Hicks (whose parents were beastly fat laymen from the Aram peninsula, never having once set foot on Greek soil) was an acquaintance of both men, having met them on Ships Day, a day that saw three chickens dressed in red satin overcoats, one with a fiery orange cockscomb, pantomiming the second act of King Lear, and a quair fellow with a fig-shaped birthmark eating Augers’ Blancmange with boysenberry compote. The scout master Simms learned of the whereabouts of the third whore’s glove from the quair fellow who said he knew one of the notary’s who worked for the Norwegian Collection Agency and Notaries. He said that the Ramat Gan family were in cahoots with the dogmen, and that between the two of them they had more gloves than a many-handed person could ever dream of owning.

The next day after his morning ablutions, a 27½ minute shower, a shave and a small continental breakfast of boiled eggs, two, toast, three, and a cup of bitter coffee, the scout master Simms left for the other side of the world. No one but the quair fellow and Dolmen Hicks, a quair fellow himself, knowing anything about the scout master Simms’ trip to the other side of the world, not even Sal Camden the cork-foot bailer, who if given the chance would tell anyone within telling distance, no, not even he.

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"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
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