Frolic of His Own Read Online Free PDF Page B

in its majestic effort to impose order upon? or is it rather to rescue order from the demeaning chaos of everyday life in this abrupt opportunity, as Christina has it, to be taken seriously before the world, in an almost inverse proportion to their place in it, their very names in fact and the inconsequential nature of their original errands, like that woman intending no further than Far Rockaway suddenly lofted to landmark status by Justice Cardozo inPalsgraf v. Long Island Railroad, or the mere passerby rendered eternal by Baron Pollack in Byrne v. Boadle beaned by a barrel of flour whence the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur tendered by Harry in an image more suiting those unnatural persons mounting, in an almost inverse proportion to the millions, billions in settlements, the frivolous legal heights of corporate anonymity, in Harry’s hands become the chandelier he’s dropped here in Oscar’s path, arching his good knee, squaring the pillow, his glasses again, licking a thumb to flick over the cover page of Szyrk v. Village of Tatamount et al., U.S. District Court, Southern District of Virginia No. 105-87, haunted by the sense that ‘reality may not exist at all except in the words in which it presents itself.’
    OPINION
    CREASE, J.
    The facts are not in dispute. On the morning of September 30 while running at large in the Village a dog identified as Spot entered under and therewith became entrapped in the lower reaches of a towering steel sculpture known as Cyclone Seven which dominates the plaza overlooking and adjoining the depot of the Norfolk & Pee Dee Railroad. Searching for his charge, the dog’s master James B who is seven years old was alerted by its whines and yelps to discover its plight, whereupon his own vain efforts to deliver it attracted those of a passerby soon joined by others whose combined attempts to wheedle, cajole, and intimidate the unfortunate animal forth served rather to compound its predicament, driving it deeper into the structure. These futile activities soon assembled a good cross section of the local population, from the usual idlers and senior citizens to members of the Village Board, the Sheriff’s office, the Fire Department, and, not surprisingly, the victim’s own kind, until by nightfall word having spread to neighboring hamlets attracted not only them in numbers sufficient to cause an extensive traffic jam but members of the local press and an enterprising television crew. Notwithstanding means successfully devised to assuage the dog’s pangs of hunger, those of its confinement continued well into the following day when the decision was taken by the full Village Board to engage the Fire Department to enter the structure employing acetylene torches to effect its safe delivery, without considering the good likelihood of precipitating an action for damages by the creator of Cyclone Seven, Mr Szyrk, a sculptor of some wide reputation in artistic circles.
    Alerted by the media to the threat posed to his creation, Mr Szyrkmoved promptly from his SoHo studio in New York to file for a temporary restraining order ‘on a summary showing of its necessity to prevent immediate and irreparable injury’ to his sculptural work, which was issued ex parte even as the torches of deliverance were being kindled. All this occurred four days ago.
    Given the widespread response provoked by this confrontation in the media at large and echoing as far distant as the deeper South and even Arkansas but more immediately at the site itself, where energies generated by opposing sympathies further aroused by the police presence and that of the Fire Department in full array, the floodlights, vans, and other paraphernalia incident to a fiercely competitive television environment bringing in its train the inevitable placards and displays of the American flag, the venders of food and novelty items, all enhanced by the barks and cries of the victim’s own local acquaintance,