The Hunting Trip Read Online Free PDF Page A

win a stuffed animal. (
Five shots for only a dollar!
the carnies barked.)
    And, if this needs to be said, although even at that tender age he had quite an imagination, it never entered his mind that he would one day become a special agent of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps, or marry a dancer of the Corps de Ballet of the Vienna State Opera, or become a
Wall
Street Journal
and
New York Times
best-selling novelist.
    What he did on the train to Manhattan that day was consider his options for the immediate future. He decided they did not include going home to face the tearful wrath of his mother in South Orange, New Jersey. He literally shuddered at the thought of what would follow once his mother stopped weeping and screaming long enough to solicit the support of her husband in dealing with him.
    His mother was married to Keyes J. Michaels, M.D. Dr. Michaels was a psychiatrist she had met professionally when she was in the process of seeking a divorce from Phil’s father, P. Wallingford Williams, Jr.
    Once she had married Dr. Michaels, which she did two days afterher divorce became final, she prevailed upon him to “help” Phil, who even then was having trouble accepting authority figures such as teachers, guidance counselors, and headmasters of schools named after saints.
    Phil knew that if he went home to South Orange, he would shortly thereafter find himself prone on Dr. Michaels’s couch, and the exchange between them would go something like this, as the good doctor sucked noisily on his pipe:
    Dr. M: Well,
Slurp
, Philip, my boy,
Slurp
, why do you think
Slurp
you wanted to hoist
Slurp
Bridget O’Malley’s intimate undergarments
Slurp
to the top of the flagpole?
Slurp
.
    Phil (knowing that “It seemed like a good idea at the time” would not be a satisfactory answer): Doctor, I just don’t know.
    Dr. M: Tell me, Phil.
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Do you spend a lot of time thinking about
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panties,
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brassieres,
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and other such things?
    Phil (having decided either “Yes” or “No” in response to the question is going to further excite the doctor’s curiosity, says nothing).
    Dr. M: Phil, my boy.
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How can I
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help you if you
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refuse to help yourself?
Slurp
Why don’t we start over?
Slurp
.
    And from there it would go downhill.
    Phil knew this because this would not be the first time his mother had asked the man she called “My Own Sigmund Freud” to help her only son.
    He thought again about joining the Army, leaving his shame and the painful wrath of his family behind him for all time. He knew what was involved with that. He had thought of joining the Army twice before, first when he’d been booted from St. Charles’s School (for smoking in his room) and again when he’d been sent home from St. Timothy’s (for selling beer and cigarettes in his room during the poker game he was running).
    He hadn’t had to go through with signing up then—although the first time he’d gotten as far as changing the date on his birth certificate to make him a year older than was the case—because other schools had given him a second chance. But he’d run out of schools willing to give him a second chance.
    This time it was the Army!
    When he got off the train in New York, he caught another to Newark, New Jersey. He went from Pennsylvania Station to the Public Service Building. That was sort of a misnomer for the latter. The Public Service Company was a for-profit business enterprise that did very well, indeed, selling electricity, gas, and bus and trolley service to the public of New Jersey. They had a monopoly on all four services.
    He knew this because his mother’s father was vice president, legal, of the Public Service Company. He also knew that in his grandfather’s secretary’s desk was an embossing device that punched the fact that she was a Notary Public of the State of New Jersey into sheets of paper.
    Phil