The last person to see him said he looked off. They say a man can eat only so many yellow-yolks before his stomach turns out. A fact of nature so they say it is. He hadn’t never heard of yellow-yolks causing a kafuffle in a man’s gizzard. But then again there’re many things he doesn’t know about; things like what a man should eat for breakfast and how best to shop for lard and cheap cooking grease. He knew how to make his cot and bend a stick into a bow, and how to shave down a table leg and fasten a prickly end to it, for stabbing and keeping at bay a full-size raging bear. He had inklings but few full-blown notions of things or objects of things. Those things he left to chance and probability, the likelihood of him making the right choice or bending his rules, which were hardly any but rules just the same, were paltry small. He rather sip tea from a tinny nudging one of the Qahirah Bros. in the shoulder or between the ribs. Other things he left to people who knew their way round things and could make up their minds’ when’re ever they needed to.
His da drove for the Mercury Fish Co. He sat on a cedar box raised three feet above the floorboards. The box kept him from getting a cold in his kidneys. The fish caromed to the right when the truck swerved to the left, the left-side fender dented in under the wheel well. The right tyre rubbed against the right-side fender, worn rubber and mud splashing the passenger-side window. His uncle Jim drove the truck every second Sunday and on those days when his da felt sick or off. Jim hated the smell of fish, weakfish and halibut turning his stomach out. Every second Sunday or when his da was off or sick he washed out the bed of the truck with petrol, flushing the fish smell and guts out through the trap in the floor. Written in plumb chalk on the inside of the riverside door was the following:
“O, begor, I want no expert nursis symaphy from yours broons quadroons and I can psoakoonaloose myself any time I want (the fog follow you all) without your interferences or any other pigeonstealer. Sample! Sample”[1]
[1] James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
His da drove for the Mercury Fish Co. He sat on a cedar box raised three feet above the floorboards. The box kept him from getting a cold in his kidneys. The fish caromed to the right when the truck swerved to the left, the left-side fender dented in under the wheel well. The right tyre rubbed against the right-side fender, worn rubber and mud splashing the passenger-side window. His uncle Jim drove the truck every second Sunday and on those days when his da felt sick or off. Jim hated the smell of fish, weakfish and halibut turning his stomach out. Every second Sunday or when his da was off or sick he washed out the bed of the truck with petrol, flushing the fish smell and guts out through the trap in the floor. Written in plumb chalk on the inside of the riverside door was the following:
“O, begor, I want no expert nursis symaphy from yours broons quadroons and I can psoakoonaloose myself any time I want (the fog follow you all) without your interferences or any other pigeonstealer. Sample! Sample”[1]
[1] James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
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